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4 









KINCAID’S BATTERY 



x x 



















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And the next instant she was in his arms 


KINCAID’S 

BATTERY 

by 

GEORGE W. CABLE 


ILLUSTRATED BY 

ALONZO KIMBALL 


CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
NEW YORK :: :: :: :: :: 1911 




Copyright, 1908, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


Published November, 1908 


***-£fld 




So 

E. C. S. C. 

















CONTENTS 


* 

Chapter Page 

I. Carrollton Gardens i 

II. Carriage Company 7 

III. The General’s Choice 10 

IV. Manoeuvres 16 

V. Hilary? — Yes, Unae? 21 

VI. Messrs. Smellemout and Ketchem .... 24 

VII. By Starlight 27 

VIII. One Killed 33 

IX. Her Harpoon Strikes 37 

X. Sylvia Sighs 41 

XI. In Column of Platoons 47 

XII. Mandeville Bleeds 54 

XIII. Things Anna Could Not Write 62 

XIV. Flora Taps Grandma’s Cheek 66 

XV. The Long Month of March 70 

XVI. Constance Tries to Help 76 

vii 


Contents 


Chapter Page 

XVII. “Oh, Connie, Dear— Nothing— Go On” . . 78 

XVIII. Flora Tells the Truth! 83 

XIX. Flora Romances 87 

XX. The Fight for the Standard 94 

XXI. Constance Cross-Examines 101 

XXII. Same Story Slightly Warped ...... 105 

XXIII. “Soldiers!” 112 

XXIV. Can a Parked Battery Raise a Dust ? . . .117 

XXV. “He Must Wait,” Says Anna 121 

XXVI. Swift Going, Down Stream 126 

XXVII. Hard Going, Up Stream 131 

XXVIII. The Cup of Tantalus 137 

XXIX. A Castaway Rose 143 

XXX. Good-by, Kincaid’s Battery 150 

XXXI. Virginia Girls and Louisiana Boys .... 160 

XXXII. Manassas 165 

XXXIII. Letters 169 

XXXIV. A Free-Gift Bazaar 175 

XXXV. The “Sisters of Kincaid’s Battery” .... 180 

XXXVI. Thunder-Cloud and Sunburst 183 

viii 


Contents 


Chapter Page 

XXXVII. “Till He Said, ‘I’m Come Hame, My Love’” 189 

XXXVIII. Anna’s Old Jewels 196 

XXXIX. Tight Pinch 201 

XL. The License, The Dagger 206 

XLI. For an Emergency 211 

XLII. “Victory! I Heard it as PI’—” 221 

XLIII. Sabbath at Shiloh 229 

XLIV. “They Were all Four Together” 234 

XLV. Steve — Maxime — Charlie — 238 

XLVI. The School of Suspense 247 

XLVII. From the Burial Squad 251 

XL VIII. Farragut 256 

XLIX. A City in Terror 261 

L. Anna Amazes Herself 267 

LI. The Callender Horses Enlist 272 

III. Here They Come! 278 

LIII. Ships, Shells, and Letters 284 

LIV. Same April Day Twice 290 

LV. In Darkest Dixie and Out 297 

LVI. Between the Millstones 304 


IX 


Contents 


Chapter Page 

LVII. Gates of Hell and Glory 308 

LVIII. Arachne 314 

LIX. In a Labyrinth 320 

LX. Hilary’s Ghost 324 

LXI. The Flag-of-Truce Boat 329 

LXII. Farewell, Jane! 338 

LXIII. The Iron-clad Oath 343 

LXIV. “Now, Mr. Brick-Mason—” 347 

LXV. Flora’s Last Throw 354 

LXVI. “ When I Hands in My Checks ” 362 

LXVII. Mobile 365 

LXVIII. By the Dawn’s Early Light 371 

LXIX. Southern Cross and Northern Star .... 377 

LXX. Gains and Losses 384 

LXXI. Soldiers of Peace 390 


X 


Kincaid’s Battery 

I 

CARROLLTON GARDENS 

For the scene of this narrative please take into 
mind a wide quarter-circle of country, such as any of 
the pretty women we are to know in it might have 
covered on the map with her half-opened fan. 

Let its northernmost comer be Vicksburg, the famous, 
on the Mississippi. Let the easternmost be Mobile, 
and let the most southerly and by far the most im- 
portant, that pivotal comer of the fan from which all 
its folds radiate and where the whole pictured thing 
opens and shuts, be New Orleans. Then let the grave 
moment that gently ushers us in be a long-ago after- 
noon in the Louisiana Delta. 

Throughout that land of water and sky the willow 
clumps dotting the bosom of every sea-marsh and 
fringing every rush-rimmed lake were yellow and green 
in the full flush of a new year, the war year, ’Sixty-one. 

Though rife with warm sunlight, the moist air gave 
distance and poetic charm to the nearest and hum- 
blest things. At the edges of the great timbered 
swamps thickets of young winter-bare cypresses were 
budding yet more vividly than the willows, while in 
the depths of those overflowed forests, near and far 


i 


Kincaid’s Battery 

down their lofty gray colonnades, the dwarfed swamp- 
maple drooped the winged fruit of its limp bush in 
pink and flame-yellow and rose-red masses until it 
touched its own image in the still flood. 

That which is now only the “sixth district” of 
greater New Orleans was then the small separate town 
of Carrollton. There the vast Mississippi, leaving the 
sugar and rice fields of St. Charles and St. John Bap- 
tist parishes and still seeking the Gulf of Mexico, turns 
from east to south before it sweeps northward and 
southeast again to give to the Creole capital its graceful 
surname of the “ Crescent City.” Mile-wide, brimful, 
head-on and boiling and writhing twenty fathoms deep, 
you could easily have seen, that afternoon, why its 
turfed levee had to be eighteen feet high and broad in 
proportion. So swollen was the flood that from any 
deck of a steamboat touching there one might have 
looked down upon the whole fair still suburb. 

Widely it hovered in its nest of rose gardens, orange 
groves, avenues of water-oaks, and towering moss- 
draped pecans. A few hundred yards from the levee a 
slender railway, coming from the city, with a highway 
on either side, led into its station-house; but mainly 
the eye would have dwelt on that which filled the in- 
terval between the nearer high road and the levee — the 
“Carrollton Gardens.” 

At a corner of these grounds closest to the railway 
station stood a quiet hotel from whose eastern veranda 
it was but a step to the centre of a sunny shell-paved 
court where two fountains danced and tinkled to each 
other. Along its farther bound ran a vine-clad fence 
where a row of small tables dumbly invited the flushed 


2 


Carrollton Gardens 

visitor to be inwardly cooled. By a narrow gate in this 
fence, near its townward end, a shelled walk lured on 
into a musky air of verdurous alleys that led and misled, 
crossed, doubled, and mazed among flowering shrubs 
from bower to bower. Out of sight in there the loiterer 
came at startling moments face to face with banks of 
splendid bloom in ravishing negligee — Diana disrobed, 
as it were, while that untiring sensation-hunter, the 
mocking-bird, leaped and sang and clapped his wings 
in a riot of scandalous mirth. 

In the ground-floor dining-room of that unanimated 
hotel sat an old gentleman named Brodnax, once of 
the regular army, a retired veteran of the Mexican war, 
and very consciously possessed of large means. He 
sat quite alone, in fine dress thirty years out of fashion, 
finishing a late lunch and reading a newspaper; a 
trim, hale man not to be called old in his own hearing. 
He had read everything intended for news or entertain- 
ment and was now wandering in the desert of the ad- 
vertising columns, with his mind nine miles away, at 
the other end of New Orleans. 

Although not that person whom numerous men of 
his acquaintance had begun affectionately to handicap 
with the perilous nickname of “the ladies’ man,” he 
was thinking of no less than five ladies; two of one 
name and three of another. Flora Valcour and her 
French grandmother (as well as her brother of nine- 
teen, already agog to be off in the war) had but lately 
come to New Orleans, from Mobile. On a hilly 
border of that smaller Creole city stood the home they 
had left, too isolated, with war threatening, for women 
to occupy alone. Mrs. Callender was the young widow 

3 


Kincaid’s Battery 

of this old bachelor’s life-long friend, the noted judge of 
that name, then some two years deceased. Constance 
and Anna were her step-daughters, the latter (if you 
would believe him) a counterpart of her long-lost, 
beautiful mother, whose rejection of the soldier’s suit, 
when he was a mere lieutenant, was the well-known 
cause of his singleness. These Callender ladies, 
prompted by him and with a sweet modesty of quiet- 
ness, had just armed a new field battery with its six 
splendid brass guns, and it was around these three 
Callenders that his ponderings now hung; especially 
around Anna and in reference to his much overprized 
property and two nephews: Adolphe Irby, for whom 
he had obtained the command of this battery, which he 
was to see him drill this afternoon, and Hilary Kincaid, 
who had himself cast the guns and who was to help the 
senior cousin conduct these evolutions. 

The lone reader’s glance loitered down a long row of 
slim paragraphs, each beginning with the same wee 
picture of a steamboat whether it proclaimed the 
Grand Duke or the Louis d'Or , the Ingomar bound for 
the “Lower Coast,” or the Natchez for “Vicksburg 
and the Bends.” Shifting the page, he read of the 
Swiss Bell-Ringers as back again “after a six years’ 
absence,” and at the next item really knew what he 
read. It was of John Owens’ appearance, every night, 
as Caleb Plummer in “Dot,” “performance to begin at 
seven o’clock.” Was it there Adolphe would this 
evening take his party, of which the dazzling Flora 
would be one and Anna, he hoped, another? He had 
proposed this party to Adolphe, agreeing to bear its 
whole cost if the nephew would manage to include in 
4 


Carrollton Gardens 

it Anna and Hilary. And Irby had duly reported com- 
plete success and drawn on him, but the old soldier 
still told his doubts to the newspaper. 

“Adolphe has habits,” he meditated, “but success 
is not one of them.” 

Up and down a perpendicular procession on the 
page he every now and then mentally returned the 
salute of the one little musketeer of the same height as 
the steamboat’s chimneys, whether the Attention he 
challenged was that of the Continentals, the Louisiana 
Grays, Orleans Cadets, Crescent Blues or some other 
body of blithe invincibles. Yet his thought was still 
of Anna. When Adolphe, last year, had courted her, 
and the hopeful uncle had tried non-intervention, she 
had declined him — “and oh, how wisely!” For then 
back to his native city came Kincaid after years away 
at a Northern military school and one year across the 
ocean, and the moment the uncle saw him he was glad 
Adolphe had failed. But now if she was going to find 
Hilary as light-headed and cloying as Adolphe was 
thick-headed and sour, or if she must see Hilary go 
soft on the slim Mobile girl — whom Adolphe was al- 
ready so torpidly enamored of — “H-m-m-m!” 

Two young men who had tied their horses behind 
the hotel crossed the white court toward the garden. 
They also were in civil dress, yet wore an air that goes 
only with military training. The taller was Hilary 
Kincaid, the other his old-time, Northern-born-and- 
bred school chum, Fred Greenleaf. Kincaid, coming 
home, had found him in New Orleans, on duty at 
Jackson Barracks, and for some weeks they had en- 
joyed cronying. Now they had been a day or two 

5 


Kincaid’s Battery 

apart and had chanced to meet again at this spot. 
Kincaid, it seems, had been looking at a point hard by 
with a view to its fortification. Their manner was 
frankly masterful though they spoke in guarded tones. 

“No,” said Kincaid, “you come with me to this 
drill. Nobody’ll take offence.” 

“Nor will you ever teach your cousin to handle a 
battery,” replied Greenleaf, with a sedate smile. 

“Well, he knows things we’ll never learn. Come 
with me, Fred, else I can’t see you till theatre’s out — 

if I go there with her — and you say ” 

“Yes, I want you to go with her,” murmured Green- 
leaf, so solemnly that Kincaid laughed outright. 

“But, after the show, of course,” said the laugher, 
“you and I’ll ride, eh?” and then warily, “You’ve 
taken your initials off all your stuff? . . . Yes, and 
Jerry’s got your ticket. He’ll go down with your 
things, check them all and start off on the ticket him- 
self. Then, as soon as you- — ” 

“But will they allow a slave to do so?” 

“ With my pass, yes; ‘ Let my black man, Jerry ’ ” 

The garden took the pair into its depths a moment 
too soon for the old soldier to see them as he came out 
upon the side veranda with a cloud on his brow that 
showed he had heard his nephew’s laugh. 


6 


Carriage Company 


II 

CARRIAGE COMPANY 

Bareheaded the uncle crossed the fountained court, 
sat down at a table and read again. In the veranda a 
negro, his own slave, hired to this hotel, held up an 
elegant military cap, struck an inquiring attitude, and 
called softly, “Gen’al?” 

“ Bring it with the coffee.” 

But the negro instantly brought it without the coffee 
and placed it on the table with a delicate flourish, 
shuffled a step back and bowed low: 

“ Coffee black, Gen’al, o’ co’se?” 

“ Black as your grandmother.” 

The servant tittered: “Yas, suh, so whah it flop 
up-siden de cup it leave a lemon-yalleh sta-ain.” 

He capered away, leaving the General to the little 
steamboats and to a blessed ignorance of times to be 
when at “Vicksburg and the Bends” this same waiter 
would bring his coffee made of corn-meal bran and 
muddy water, with which to wash down scant snacks 
of mule meat. The listless eye still roamed the arid 
page as the slave returned with the fragrant pot and 
cup, but now the sitter laid it by, lighted a cigar and 
mused : — • 

In this impending war the South would win, of course 
— oh, God is just! But this muser could only expect 
to fall at the front. Then his large estate , all lands and 
slaves, five hundred souls — who would inherit that and 
hold it together ? Held together it must be ! Any par- 
tition of it would break no end of sacredly humble 

7 


Kincaid’s Battery 

household and family ties and work spiritual havoc 
incalculable. There must be but one heir. Who? 
Hilary’s mother had been in heaven these many years, 
the mother of Adolphe eighteen months; months quite 
enough to show the lone brother how vast a loss is the 
absence of the right mistress from such very human in- 
terests as those of a great plantation. Not only must 
there be but one heir, but he must have the right wife. 

The schemer sipped. So it was Anna for Hilary if 
he could bring it about. So, too, it must be Hilary for 
his adjutant-general, to keep him near enough to teach 
him the management of the fortune coming to him if 
he, Hilary, would only treat his kind uncle’s wishes — 
reasonably. With the cup half lifted he harkened. 
From a hidden walk and bower close on the garden 
side of this vine-mantled fence sounded footsteps and 
voices : 

“But, Fred! where on earth did she get — let’s sit in 
here — get that rich, belated, gradual smile?” 

A memory thrilled the listening General. “From 
her mother,” thought he, and listened on. 

“It’s like,” continued his nephew — “I’ll tell you 
what it’s like. It’s like — Now, let me alone ! You see, 
one has to learn her beauty — by degrees. You know, 
there is a sort of beauty that flashes on you at first 
sight, like — like the blaze of a ball-room. I was just 
now thinking of a striking instance ” 

“From Mobile? You always are.” 

“No such thing! Say, Fred, I’ll tell you what Miss 
Anna’s smile is like. It’s as if you were trying — say in 
a telescope — for a focus, and at last all at once it comes 
and — there’s your star!” 


8 


Carriage Company 

The Northerner softly assented. 

“Fred! Fancy Flora Valcour with that smile!” 

“No! Hilary Kincaid, I think you were bom to 
believe in every feminine creature God ever made. No 
wonder they nickname you as they do. Now, some 
girls are quite too feminine for me.” 

In his own smoke the General’s eyes opened aggres- 
sively. But hark! His nephew spoke again: 

“Fred, if you knew all that girl has done for that boy 
and that grandmother — It may sound like an over- 
statement, but you must have observed ” 

“That she’s a sort of overstatement herself?” 

“ Go to grass ! Your young lady’s not even an under- 
statement; she’s only a profound pause. See here! 
what time is it? I prom ” 

On the uncle’s side of the fence a quick step brought 
a newcomer, a Creole of maybe twenty-nine years, 
member of his new staff, in bright uniform : 

“Ah, G£n6ral, yo’ moze ob-edient! Never less al- 
lone then when al-lone ? ’T is the way with myseff ” 

He seemed not unrefined, though of almost too met- 
tlesome an eye; in length of leg showing just the lack, 
in girth of waist just the excess, to imply a better dignity 
on horseback and to allow a proud tailor to prove how 
much art can overcome. Out on the road a liveried 
black coachman had halted an open carriage, in which 
this soldier had arrived with two ladies. Now these 
bowed delightedly from it to the General, while Kin- 
caid and his friend stood close hid and listened agape, 
equally amused and dismayed. 

“How are you, Mandeville?” said the General. “I 
am not nearly as much alone as I seem, sir!” 

9 


Kincaid’s Battery 

A voice just beyond the green-veiled fence cast a 
light on this reply and brought a flush to the Creole’s 
very brows. 4 ‘Alas! Greenleaf,” it cried, 44 we search 
in vain! He is not here! We are even more alone 
than we seem! Ah! where is that peerless chevalier, 
my beloved, accomplished, blameless, sagacious, just, 
valiant and amiable uncle? Come let us press on. 
Let not the fair sex find him first and snatch him from 
us forever!” 

The General’s scorn showed only in his eyes as they 
met the blaze of Mandeville’s. 44 You were about to 
remark — ?” he began, but rose and started toward the 
carriage. 

There not many minutes later you might have seen 
the four men amicably gathered and vying in clever 
speeches to pretty Mrs. Callender and her yet fairer 
though less scintillant step-daughter Anna. 

Ill 

THE GENERAL’S CHOICE 

Anna Callender. In the midst of the gay skirmish 
and while she yielded Greenleaf her chief attention, 
Hilary observed her anew. 

What he thought he saw was a golden-brown profu- 
sion of hair with a peculiar richness in its platted coils, 
an unconsciously faultless poise of head, and, equally 
unconscious, a dreamy softness of sweeping lashes. As 
she laughed with the General her student noted further 
what seemed to him a rare silkiness in the tresses, a 
vapory lightness in the short strands that played over 
io 


The General’s Choice 

the outlines of temple and forehead, and the unstudied 
daintiness with which they gathered into the merest 
mist of a short curl before her exquisite ear. 

But when now she spoke with him these charms 
became forgettable as he discovered, or fancied he did, 
in her self-oblivious eyes, a depth of thought and feeling 
not in the orbs alone but also in the brows and lids, and 
between upper and under lashes as he glimpsed them 
in profile while she turned to Mandeville. And now, 
unless his own insight misled him, he observed how un- 
like those eyes, and yet how subtly mated with them, 
was her mouth; the delicate rising curve of the upper 
lip, and the floral tenderness with which it so faintly 
overhung the nether, wherefrom it seemed ever about 
to part yet parted only when she spoke or smiled. 

“A child’s mouth and a woman’s eyes,” he mused. 

When her smiles came the mouth remained as young 
as before, yet suddenly, as truly as the eyes, showed — 
showed him at least — steadfastness of purpose, while 
the eyes, where fully half the smile was, still unwit- 
tingly revealed their depths of truth. 

“Poor Fred!” he pondered as the General and Man- 
deville entered the carriage and it turned away. 

A mile or two from Carrollton down the river and 
toward the city lay the old unfenced fields where Hilary 
had agreed with Irby to help him manoeuvre his very 
new command. Along the inland edge of this plain 
the railway and the common road still ran side by side, 
but the river veered a mile off. So Mandeville pointed 
out to the two ladies as they, he, and the General drove 
up to the spot with Kincaid and Greenleaf as outriders. 
The chosen ground was a level stretch of wild turf 


ii 


Kincaid’s Battery' 

maybe a thousand yards in breadth, sparsely dotted 
with shoulder-high acacias. No military body was yet 
here, and the carriage halted at the first good view 
point. 

Mrs. Callender, the only member of her family who 
was of Northern birth and rearing, was a small slim 
woman whose smile came whenever she spoke and 
whose dainty nose went all to merry wrinkles whenever 
she smiled. It did so now, in the shelter of her diminu- 
tive sunshade opened flat against its jointed handle to 
fend off the strong afternoon beams, while she explained 
to Greenleaf — dismounted beside the wheels with Man- 
deville — that Constance, Anna’s elder sister, would 
arrive by and by with Flora Valcour. “ Connie,” she 
said, had been left behind in the clutches of the dress- 
maker! 

“Flora,” she continued, crinkling her nose ever so 
kind-heartedly at Greenleaf, “is Lieutenant Mande- 
ville’s cousin, you know. Didn’t he tell you something 
back yonder in Carrollton?” 

Greenleaf smiled an admission and her happy eyes 
closed to mere chinks. What had been told was that 
Constance had yesterday accepted Mandeville. 

“Yes,” jovially put in the lucky man, “I have di- 
vulge’ him that, and he seem’ almoze as glad as the 
young lady herseff!” 

Even to this the sweet widow’s misplaced wrinkles 
faintly replied, while Greenleaf asked, “Does the 
Lieutenant’s good fortune account for the — ‘ clutches 
of the dressmaker’ ?” 

It did. The Lieutenant hourly expecting to be ordered 
to the front, this wedding, like so many others, would 


12 


The General’s Choice 

be at the earliest day possible. “A great concession,” 
the lady said, turning her piquant wrinkles this time 
upon Mandeville. But just here the General en- 
grossed attention. His voice had warmed sentimentally 
and his kindled eye was passing back and forth between 
Anna seated by him and Hilary close at hand in the 
saddle. He waved wide: 

“This all-pervading haze and perfume, dew and 
dream,” he was saying, “is what makes this the Lalla 
Rookh’s land it is!” He smiled at himself and con- 
fessed that Carrollton Gardens always went to his head. 
“Anna, did you ever hear your mother sing — 

“‘There’s a bower of roses — ’?” 

She lighted up to say yes, but the light was all he 
needed to be lured on through a whole stanza, and a 
tender sight — Ocean silvering to brown-haired Cyn- 
thia — were the two, as he so innocently strove to re- 
create out of his own lost youth, for her and his nephew, 
this atmosphere of poetry. 

“‘To sit in the roses and hear the bird’s song!’” 

he suavely ended — “I used to make Hilary sing that 
for me when he was a boy.” 

“Doesn’t he sing it yet?” asked Mrs. Callender. 

“ My God, madame, since I found him addicted to 
comic songs I’ve never asked him!” 

Kincaid led the laugh and the talk became lively. 
Anna was merrily accused by Miranda (Mrs. Callender) 
of sharing the General’s abhorrence of facetious song. 
First she pleaded guilty and then reversed her plea with 
an absurd tangle of laughing provisos delightful even 
i3 


Kincaid’s Battery 

to herself. At the same time the General withdrew 
from his nephew all imputation of a frivolous mind, 
though the nephew avowed himself nonsensical from 
birth and destined to die so. It was a merry moment, 
so merry that Kincaid’s bare mention of Mandeville as 
Mandy made even the General smile and every one 
else laugh. The Creole, to whom any mention of him- 
self, (whether it called for gratitude or for pistols and 
coffee,) was always welcome, laughed longest. If he 
was Mandy, he hurried to rejoin, the absent Constance 
“muz be Candy^-ha, ha, ha!” And when Anna said 
Miranda should always thenceforth be Randy, and Mrs. 
Callender said Anna ought to be Andy, and the very 
General was seduced into suggesting that then Hilary 
would be Handy, and when every one read in every 
one’s eye, the old man’s included, that Brodnax would 
naturally be Brandy, the Creole bent and wept with 
mirth, counting all that fine wit exclusively his. 

“But, noi” he suddenly said, “Hilary he would be 
Dandy, bic-ause he’s call’ the ladies’ man!” 

“No, sir!” cried the General. “Hil — ” He turned 
upon his nephew, but finding him engaged with Anna, 
faced round to his chum: “For Heaven’s sake, Green- 
leaf, does he allow ?” 

“He can’t help it now,” laughed his friend, “he’s 
tagged it on himself by one of his songs.” 

“Oh, by Jove, Hilary, it serves you right for singing 
them!” 

Hilary laughed to the skies, the rest echoing. 

“A ladies’ man!” the uncle scoffed on. “Of all 
things on God’s earth!” But there he broke into 
lordly mirth: “Don’t you believe that of him, ladies, 
14 


The General’s Choice 

at any rate. If only for my sake, Anna, don’t you ever 
believe a breath of it!” 

The ladies laughed again, but now Kincaid found 
them a distraction. Following his glance cityward they 
espied a broad dust-cloud floating off toward the river. 
He turned to Anna and softly cried, “Here come your 
guns, trying to beat the train!” 

The ladies stood up to see. An unseen locomotive 
whistled for a brief stop. The dust-cloud drew nearer. 
The engine whistled to start again, and they could hear 
its bell and quickening puff. But the dust-cloud came 
on and on, and all at once the whole six-gun battery — 
six horses to each piece and six to each caisson — cap- 
tain, buglers, guidon, lieutenants, sergeants and drivers 
in the saddle, cannoneers on the chests — swept at full 
trot, thumping, swaying, and rebounding, up the high- 
way and off it, and, forming sections, swung out upon 
the field in double column, while the roaring train 
rolled by it and slowed up to the little frame box of 
Buerthe’s Station with passengers cheering from every 
window. 

The Callenders’ carriage horses were greatly taxed in 
their nerves, yet they kept their discretion. Kept it 
even when now the battery flashed from column into 
line and bore down upon them, the train meanwhile 
whooping on toward Carrollton. And what an elated 
flock of brightly dressed citizens and citizenesses had 
alighted from the cars — many of them on the moment’s 
impulse — to see these dear lads, with their romantically 
acquired battery, train for the holiday task of scaring 
the dastard foe back to their frozen homes! How we 
loved the moment’s impulse those days! 

15 


Kincaid’s Battery 

What a gay show ! And among the very prettiest and 
most fetchingly arrayed newcomers you would quickly 
have noticed three with whom this carriage group ex- 
changed signals. Kincaid spurred off to meet them 
while Greenleaf and Mandeville helped Anna and 
Miranda to the ground. “ There’s Constance,” said 
the General. 

“Yes,” Mrs. Callender replied, “and Flora and 
Charlie Valcour!” as if that were the gleefulest good 
luck of all. 


IV 

MANOEUVRES. 

Captain Irby, strong, shapely, well clad, auburn- 
haired, left his halted command and came into the car- 
riage group, while from the train approached his cousin 
and the lithe and picturesque Miss Valcour. 

The tallish girl always looked her best beside some 
manly form of unusual stature, and because that form 
now was Hilary’s Irby was aggrieved. All their days 
his cousin had been getting into his light, and this 
realization still shaded his brow as Kincaid yielded 
Flora to him and returned to Anna to talk of things too 
light for record. 

Not so light were the thoughts Anna kept unuttered. 
Here again, she reflected, was he who (according to 
Greenleaf) had declined to command her guns in order 
to let Irby have them. Why ? In kindness to his cousin, 
or in mild dislike of a woman’s battery ? If intuition was 
worth while, this man was soon to be a captain some- 
where. Here was that rare find for which even maid 
16 


Manoeuvres 

ens’ eyes were alert those days — a bom leader. No 
ladies’ man this — “of all things on God’s earth!” A 
men’s man ! And yet — nay, therefore — a man for some 
unparagoned woman some day to yield her heart and 
life to, and to have for her very own, herself his con- 
summate adornment. She cast a glance at Flora. 

But her next was to him as they talked on. How 
nearly black was the waving abundance of his hair. 
How placid his brow, above eyes whose long lashes 
would have made them meltingly tender had they not 
been so large with mirth: “A boy’s eyes,” thought she 
while he remembered what he had just called hers. She 
noted his mouth, how gently firm: “A man’s mouth!” 

Charlie Valcour broke in between them: “Is there 
not going to be any drill, after all ? ” 

“Tell Captain Irby you can’t wait any longer,” re- 
plied Kincaid with a mock frown and gave Anna yet 
gayer attention a minute more. Then he walked be- 
side his cousin toward the command, his horse close at 
his back. The group, by pairs, chose view points. 
Only Miss Valcour stayed in the carriage with the Gen- 
eral, bent on effecting a change in his mind. In Mobile 
Flora had been easily first in any social set to which she 
condescended. In New Orleans, brought into the 
Callenders’ circles by her cousin Mandeville, she had 
found herself quietly ranked second to Anna, and Anna 
now yet more pointedly outshining her through the 
brazen splendor of this patriotic gift of guns. For this 
reason and others yet to appear she had planned a 
strategy and begun a campaign, one of whose earliest 
manoeuvres must be to get Irby, not Kincaid, made 
their uncle’s adjutant-general, and therefore to persuade 
i7 


Kincaid’s Battery 

the uncle that to give Kincaid the battery would endear 
him to Anna and so crown with victory the old man’s 
perfectly obvious plan. 

Greenleaf left his horse tied and walked apart with 
Anna. This, he murmured, was the last time they 
would be together for years. 

“Yes,” she replied with a disheartening composure, 
although from under the parasol with which he shaded 
her she met his eyes so kindly that his heart beat 
quicker. But before he could speak on she looked 
away to his fretting horse and then across to the battery, 
where a growing laugh was running through the whole 
undisciplined command. “What is it about?” she 
playfully inquired, but then saw. In response to the 
neigh of Greenleaf’s steed Hilary’s had paused an in- 
stant and turned his head, but now followed on again, 
while the laughter ended in the clapping of a hundred 
hands; for Kincaid’s horse had the bridle free on his 
neck and was following his master as a dog follows. 
Irby scowled, the General set his jaws, and Hilary took 
his horse’s bridle and led him on. 

“ That’s what 1 want to do every time I look at him ! ” 
called Charlie to his sister. 

“Then look the other way!” carolled back the slender 
beauty. To whom Anna smiled across in her belated 
way, and wondered if the impulse to follow Hilary 
Kincaid ever came to women. 

But now out yonder the two cousins were in the 
saddle, Irby’s sabre was out, and soon the manoeuvres 
were fully under way. Flora, at the General’s side, 
missed nothing of them, yet her nimble eye kept her 
well aware that across here in this open seclusion the 
18 


Manoeuvres 

desperate Greenleaf’s words to Anna were rarely ex- 
planatory of the drill. 

“And now,” proclaimed Mandeville, “you’ll see 
them form into line fazed to the rear!” And Flora, 
seeing and applauding, saw also Anna turn to her 
suitor a glance, half pity for him, half pleading for his 
pity. 

“I say unless — ” Greenleaf persisted 

“There is no ‘unless.’ There can’t ever be any.” 

“But may I not at least say ?” 

“I’d so much rather you would not,” she begged. 

“At present, you mean?” 

“Or in the future,” said Anna, and, having done 
perfectly thus far, spoiled all by declaring she would 
“never marry!” Her gaze rested far across the field 
on the quietly clad figure of Kincaid riding to and fro 
and pointing hither and yon to his gold-laced cousin. 
Off here on the left she heard Mandeville announcing: 

“Now they’ll form batt’rie to the front by throwing 
caisson’ to the rear — look — look! . . . Ah, ha! was 
not that a prettie?” 

Pretty it was declared to be on all sides. Flora 
called it “a beautiful.” Part of her charm was a 
Creole accent much too dainty for print. Anna and 
Greenleaf and the other couples regathered about the 
carriage, and Miss Valcour from her high seat smiled 
her enthusiasm down among them, exalting theirs. 
And now as a new movement of the battery followed, 
and now another, her glow heightened, and she called 
musically to Constance, Mrs. Callender and Anna, by 
turns, to behold and admire. For one telling moment 
she was, and felt herself, the focus of her group, the 

*9 


Kincaid’s Battery 

centre of its living picture. Out afield yet another 
manoeuvre was on, and while Anna and her suitor 
stood close below her helplessly becalmed each by each, 
Flora rose to her feet and caught a great breath of de- 
light. Her gaze was on the glittering mass of men, 
horses, and brazen guns that came thundering across 
the plain in double column — Irby at its head, Kincaid 
alone on the flank — and sweeping right and left de- 
ployed into battery to the front with cannoneers spring- 
ing to their posts for action. 

“ Pretties’ of all!” she cried, and stood, a gentle air 
stirring her light draperies, until the boys at the empty 
guns were red-browed and short of breath in their 
fierce pretence of loading and firing. Suddenly the 
guns were limbered up and went bounding over the 
field, caissons in front. And now pieces passed their 
caissons, and now they were in line, then in double 
column, and presently were gleaming in battery again, 
faced to the rear. And now at command the tired 
lads dropped to the ground to rest, or sauntered from 
one lounging squad to another, to chat and chaff and 
puff cigarettes. Kincaid and Irby lent their horses to 
Mandeville and Charlie, who rode to the battery while 
the lenders joined the ladies. 

Once more Hilary yielded Flora and sought Anna; 
but with kinder thought for Flora Anna pressed herself 
upon Irby, to the open chagrin of his uncle. So Kin- 
caid cheerfully paired with Flora. But thus both he 
and Anna unwittingly put the finishing touch upon 
that change of heart in the General which Flora, by 
every subtlety of indirection, this hour and more in the 
carriage, had been bringing about. 


20 


Hilary?— Yes, Uncle? 

A query: With Kincaid and Irby the chief figures in 
their social arena and Hilary so palpably his cousin’s 
better in looks, in bearing, talents, and character, is it 
not strange that Flora, having conquest for her ruling 
passion, should strive so to relate Anna to Hilary as to 
give her, Anna, every advantage for the higher prize? 
Maybe it is, but she liked strangeness — and a stiff 
game. 


V 

HILARY?— YES, UNCLE? 

Second half as well as first, the drill was ended. 
The low acacias and great live-oaks were casting their 
longest shadows. The great plain rested from the 
trample and whirl of hoofs, guns, and simulated battle. 
A whiff of dust showed where the battery ambled town- 
ward among roadside gardens, the Callender carriage 
spinning by it to hurry its three ladies and Mandeville 
far away to the city’s lower end. At the column’s head 
rode Irby in good spirits, having got large solace of 
Flora’s society since we last saw her paired with Kin- 
caid. Now beside the tiny railway station Hilary was 
with her once more as she and Charlie awaited the train 
from town. Out afield were left only General Brodnax 
and Greenleaf, dismounted between the Northerner’s 
horse and Hilary’s. Now Kincaid came across the turf. 

“Greenleaf,” said the old soldier, “why does Hilary 
forever walk as though he were bringing the best joke 
of the season? Can’t you make him quit it?” 

The nephew joined them: “Uncle, if you’d like to 
borrow my horse I can go by train.” 


21 


Kincaid’s Battery 

That was a joke. “H-m-m! I see! No, Greenleaf’s 
going by train. Would you like to ride with me?” 

“Well, eh — ha! Why, uncle, I — why, of course, if 
Fred really — ” They mounted and went. 

“Hilary?” 

“Yes, uncle?” 

“ How is it now ? Like my girl any better ? ” 

“Why — yes! Oh, she’s fine! And yet I ” 

“You must say? What must you say?” 

“Nothing much; only that she’s not the kind to 
seem like the owner of a field battery. My goodness! 

uncle, if she had half Miss Flora’s tang ” 

“She hasn’t the least need of it! She’s the quiet 
kind, sir, that fools who love ‘tang’ overlook!” 

“Yes,” laughed Hilary, “she’s quiet; quiet as a 

fortification by moonlight! Poor Fred! I wish ” 

“Well, thank God you wish in vain! That’s just 
been settled. I asked him — oh, don’t look surprised 
at me. Good Lord! hadn’t I the right to know?” 

The two rode some way in silence. “ I wish,” mused 
the nephew aloud, “it could be as he wants it.” 

The uncle’s smile was satirical: “Did you ever, my 
boy, wish anything could be as I want it ? ” 

“Now, uncle, there’s a big difference ” 

“Damn the difference! I’m going to try you. 
I’m going to make Adolphe my adjutant-general. 
Then if you hanker for this battery as it hankers for 
you ” 

“Mary, Queen of Scots!” rejoiced Hilary. “That’ll 

suit us both to the bone ! And if it suits you too ” 

“Well it doesn’t! You know I’ve never wanted 
Adolphe about me. But you’ve got me all snarled up, 


22 


Hilary?— Yes, Uncle? 

the whole kit of you. What’s more, I don’t want him 
for my heir nor any girl with ‘ tang ’ for mistress of my 
lands and people. Hilary, I swear! if you’ve got the 
sand to want Anna and she’s got the grace to take you, 
then, adjutant-general or not, I’ll leave you my whole 
fortune! Well, what amuses you now?” 

“Why, uncle, all the cotton in New Orleans couldn’t 
tempt me to marry the girl I wouldn’t take dry so with- 
out a continental cent.” 

“But your own present poverty might hold you back 
even from the girl you wanted, mightn’t it?” 

“No!” laughed the nephew, “nothing would!” 

“Good God! Well, if you’ll want Anna I’ll make it 
easy for you to ask for her. If not, I’ll make it as hard 
as I can for you to get any one else.” 

Still Hilary laughed: “H-oh, uncle, if I loved any 
girl, I’d rather have her without your estate than with 
it.” Suddenly he sobered and glowed: “I wish you’d 
leave it to Adolphe ! He’s a heap-sight better business 
man than I. Besides, being older, he feels he has the 
better right to it. You know you always counted on 
leaving it to him.” 

The General looked black: “You actually decline 
the gift?” 

“'No. No, I don’t. I want to please you. But of 
my own free choice I wouldn’t have it. I’m no abo- 
litionist, but I don’t want that kind of property. I 
don’t want the life that has to go with it. I know other 
sorts that are so much better. I’m not thinking only 
of the moral responsibility ” 

“By ! sir, I am!” 

“I know you are, and I honor you for it.” 

23 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“Bah! . . . Hilary, I — I’m much obliged to you for 
your company, but ” 

“You’ve had enough,” laughed the good-natured 
young man. “Good-evening, sir.” He took a cross- 
street. 

“Good-evening, my boy.” The tone was so kind 
that Hilary cast a look back. But the General’s eyes 
were straight before him. 

Greenleaf accompanied the Valcours to their door. 
Charlie, who disliked him, and whose admiration for 
his own sister was privately cynical, had left them to 
themselves in the train. There, wholly undetected by 
the very man who had said some women were too 
feminine and she was one, she had played her sex 
against his with an energy veiled only by its intellectual 
nimbleness and its utterly dispassionate design. Char- 
lie detected achievement in her voice as she twittered 
good-by to the departing soldier from their street door. 

VI 

MESSRS. SMELLEMOUT AND KETCHEM 

Night came, all stars. The old St. Charles Theatre 
filled to overflowing with the city’s best, the hours 
melted away while Maggie Mitchell played Fanchon, 
and now, in the bright gas-light of the narrow thorough- 
fare, here were Adolphe and Hilary helping their three 
ladies into a carriage. All about them the feasted 
audience was pouring forth into the mild February night. 

The smallest of the three women was aged. That 
24 


Messrs. Smellemout and Ketchem 

the other two were young and beautiful we know 
already. At eighteen the old lady, the Bohemian-glass 
one, had been one of those royalist refugees of the 
French Revolution whose butterfly endeavors to colo- 
nize in Alabama and become bees make so pathetic a 
chapter in history. When one knew that, he could 
hardly resent her being heavily enamelled. Irby 
pressed into the coach after the three and shut the 
door, Kincaid uncovered, and the carriage sped off. 
r Hilary turned, glanced easily over the heads of the 
throng, and espied Greenleaf beckoning with a slender 
cane. Together they crossed the way and entered the 
office of a public stable. 

“Our nags again,” said Kincaid to one of a seated 
group, and passed into a room beyond. Thence he re- 
issued with his dress modified for the saddle, and the 
two friends awaited their mounts under an arch. 
“Dost perceive, Frederic,” said the facetious Hilary, 
“yon modestly arrayed pair of palpable gents hieing 
hitherward yet pretending not to descry us? They be 
detectives. Oh — eh — gentlemen ! ” 

The strangers halted inquiringly and then came for- 
ward. The hair of one was black, of the other gray. 
Hilary brightened upon them: “I was just telling my 
friend who you are. You know me, don’t you?” A 
challenging glint came into his eye. 

But the gray man showed a twinkle to match it: 
“Why — by sight — yes — what there is of you.” 

Hilary smiled again: “I saw you this morning in 
the office of the Committee of Public Safety, where I 
was giving my word that this friend of mine should 
leave the city within twenty-four hours.” He intro- 

25 


Kincaid’s Battery 

duced him: “ Lieutenant Greenleaf, gentleman, United 
States Army. Fred, these are Messrs. Smellemout and 
Ketchem, a leading firm in the bottling business.” 

Greenleaf and the firm expressed their pleasure. 
“ We hang out at the comer of Poet and Good-Children 
Streets,” said the black-haired man, but made his eyes 
big to imply that this was romance. 

Greenleaf lifted his brows: “Streets named for your- 
selves, I judge.” 

“ Aye. Poet for each, Good-Children for both.” 

Kincaid laughed out. “The Lieutenant and I,” he 
said as he moved toward their approaching horses, 
“live on Love street exactly half-way between Piety and 
Desire.” His eyes widened, too. Suddenly he stepped 
between Greenleaf and the others: “See here, let’s 
begin to tell the truth! You know Kincaid’s Foundry? 
It was my father’s ” 

“ And his father’s before him,” said the gray man. 

“And I’ve come home to go into this war,” Hilary 
went on. 

“And just at present,” said Gray, “you’re casting 
shot and shell and now and then a cannon; good for 
you! You want to give us your guarantee ?” 

“That my friend and I will be together every moment 
till he leaves to-morrow morning on the Jackson Rail- 
road, bound for the North without a stop.” 

“To go into this war on the other side!” 

“ Why, of course ! ” said the smiling Kincaid. “ Now, 
that’s all, isn’t it? I fear we’re keeping you.” 

“Oh, no.” The gray man’s crow’s-feet deepened 
playfully. “ If you think you need us we’ll stick by you 
all night.” 


26 


By Starlight 

“No,” laughed Kincaid, “there’s no call for you to 
be so sticky as all that.” The horsemen mounted. 

“Better us than the Patriots’ League,” said the 
younger detective to Hilary as Greenleaf moved off. 
“They’ve got your friend down in their Send-’em-to- 
hell book and are after him now. That’s how come 
we to be ” 

“ I perceive,” replied Hilary, and smiled in meditation. 
“Why — thank you, both!” 

“ Oh, you go right along, Mr. Kincaid. We’ll be at 
the depot to-morrow ourselves, and to-night we’ll see 
that they don’t touch neither one of you.” 

Hilary’s smile grew : “ Why — thank you again ! That 
will make it more comfortable for them. Good-night.” 

The two friends rode to a comer, turned into Poydras 
Street, crossed Magazine and Tchoupitoulas and 
presently, out from among the echoing fronts of un- 
lighted warehouses, issued upon the wide, white Levee. 

VII 

BY STARLIGHT 

“Wait,” murmured Greenleaf, as they halted to 
view the scene. From their far right came the vast, 
brimming river, turbid, swift, silent, its billows every 
now and then rising and looking back as if they fled 
from implacable pursuers; sweeping by long, slumber- 
ing ranks of ships and steamboats; swinging in majestic 
breadth around the bend a mile or more below; and at 
the city’s end, still beyond, gliding into mystic oblivion. 
Overhead swarmed the stars and across the flood came 
27 


Kincaid’s Battery 

faintly the breath of orange-groves, sea-marshes and 
prairies. 

Greenleaf faced across the wide bend at his left. In 
that quarter, quite hidden in live-oaks and magnolias, 
as both well knew, were the low, red towers of Jackson 
Barracks. But it was not for them the evicted young 
soldier claimed this last gaze. It was for a large 
dwelling hard by them, a fine old plantation house with 
wide verandas, though it also was shut from view, in 
its ancient grove. 

“Fred,” said Hilary, “didn’t she tell you why?” 

“No,” replied the lover when they had turned away 
and were moving up the harbor front, “ except that it 
is n’t because I’m for the Union.” 

Hilary’s eyes went wide: “That’s wonderful, old 
man! But I don’t believe she likes a soldier of any 
sort. If I were a woman I’d be doggoned if I’d ever 
marry a soldier!” 

“Yet the man who gets her,” said Greenleaf, “ought 
to be a soldier in every drop of his blood. You don’t 
know her yet; but you soon will, and I’m glad.” 

“Now, why so? I can’t ever please her enough to 
be pleased with her. I’m too confounded frivolous! I 
love nonsense, doggon it, for its own sake! I love to 
get out under a sky like this and just reel and whoop 
in the pure joy of standing on a world that’s whirling 
round!” 

“But you do please her. She’s told me so.” 

“Don’t you believe her! I don’t. I can’t. I tell 
you, Fred, I could never trust a girl that forever looks 
so trustworthy! S’pose I should fall in love with her! 
Would you — begrudge her to me?” 

28 


By Starlight 

“ I bequeath her to you.” 

“Ah! you know I haven’t the ghost of a chance! 
She’s not for po’ little Hil’ry. I never did like small 
women, anyhow!” 

“My boy! If ever you like this one she’ll no more 
seem small than the open sea.” 

“I suppose,” mused Hilary, “that’s what makes it 
all the harder to let go. If a girl has a soul so petty 
that she can sit and hear you through to the last word 
your heart can bleed, you can turn away from her with 
some comfort of resentment, as if you still had a rem- 
nant of your own stature.” 

“Precisely!” said the lover. “But when she’s too 
large-hearted to let you speak, and yet answers your un- 
spoken word, once for all, with a compassion so modest 
that it seems as if it were you having compassion on 
her, she’s harder to give up than ” 

“Doggon her, Fred, I wouldn’t give her up!” 

“Ah, this war, Hilary! I may never see her again. 
There’s just one man in this world whom ” 

“Oh, get out!” 

“I mean what I say. To you I leave her.” 

“Ha, ha! No, you don’t! It’s only to her you 
leave me. Old boy, promise me! If you ever come 
back and she’s still in the ring, you’ll go for her again 
no matter who else is bidding, your humble servant not 
excepted.” 

“Why — yes — I — I promise that. Now, will you 
promise me?” 

“What! let myself ?” 

“Yes.” 

“Ho-o, not by a jug-full! If ever I feel her harpoon 
29 


Kincaid’s Battery 

in me I'll fight like a whale! But I promise you this, 
and warn you, too: That when it comes to that, a 
whole platoon of Fred Greenleafs between her and me 
won’t make a pinch of difference.” 

To that Greenleaf agreed, and the subject was 
changed. With shipping ever on their left and cotton- 
yards and warehouses for tobacco and for salt on their 
right their horses’ feet clinked leisurely over the cobble 
pavements, between thousands of cotton-bales headed 
upon the unsheltered wharves and only fewer thou- 
sands on the narrow sidewalks. 

So passed the better part of an hour before they were 
made aware, by unmistakable odors, that they were 
nearing the Stock-Landing. There, while they were yet 
just a trifle too far away to catch its echoes, had occurred 
an incident — a fracas, in fact — some of whose results 
belong with this narrative to its end. While they amble 
toward the spot let us reconnoitre it. Happily it has 
long been wiped out, this blot on the city’s scutcheon. 
Its half-dozen streets were unspeakable mud, its air was 
stenches, its buildings were incredibly foul slaughter- 
houses and shedded pens of swine, sheep, beeves, cows, 
calves, and mustang ponies. The plank footways were 
enclosed by stout rails to guard against the chargings of 
long-homed cattle chased through the thoroughfares by 
lasso-whirling “bull-drivers” as wild as they. In the 
middle of the river-front was a ferry, whence Louis- 
iana Avenue, broad, treeless, grassy, and thinly lined 
with slaughter-houses, led across the plain. Down this 
untidy plaisance a grimy little street-car, every half-hour, 
jogged out to the Carrollton railway and returned. 
This street and the water-front were lighted — twilighted 
30 


By Starlight 

— with lard -oil lamps; the rest of the place was dark. 
At each of the two comers facing the ferry was a 
“coffee-house” — dram-shop, that is to say. 

Messrs. Sam Gibbs and Maxime Lafontaine were 
president and vice-president of that Patriots’ League 
against whose machinations our two young men had 
been warned by the detectives in St. Charles Street. 
They had just now arrived at the Stock-Landing. 
Naturally, on so important an occasion they were far 
from sober; yet on reaching the spot they had lost no 
time in levying on a Gascon butcher for a bucket of tar 
and a pillow of feathers, on an Italian luggerman for a 
hurried supper of raw oysters, and on the keeper of one 
of the “ coffee-houses ” for drinks for the four. 

“Us four and no more!” sang the gleeful Gibbs; 
right number to manage a delicate case. The four glasses 
emptied, he had explained that all charges must be 
collected, of course, from the alien gentleman for whom 
the plumage and fixative were destined. Hence a loud 
war of words, which the barkeeper had almost smoothed 
out when the light-hearted Gibbs suddenly decreed 
that the four should sing, march, pat and “cut the 
pigeon- wing ” to the new song (given nightly by Christy’s 
Minstrels) entitled “ Dixie’s Land.” 

Hot threats recurring, Gascony had turned to go, 
Maxime had headed him off, Italy’s hand had started 
into his flannel shirt, and “bing! bang! pop!” rang 
Gibbs’s repeater and one of Ma^ime’s little derringers — 
shot off from inside his sack-coat pocket. A whirlwind 
of epithets filled the place. Out into the stinking dark 
leaped Naples and Gascony, and after them darted 
their whooping assailants. The shutters of both bar- 

31 


Kincaid’s Battery 

rooms clapped to, over the way a pair of bull-drivers 
rushed to their mustangs, there was a patter of hoofs 
there and of boots here and all inner lights vanished. 
A watchman’s rattle buzzed remotely. Then silence 
reigned. 

Now Sam and Maxime, deeming the incident closed, 
were walking up the levee road beyond the stock-pens, 
in the new and more sympathetic company of the two 
mounted bull-drivers, to whose love of patriotic adven- 
ture they had appealed successfully. A few yards 
beyond a roadside pool backed by willow bushes they 
set down tar-bucket and pillow, and under a low, vast 
live-oak bough turned and waited. A gibbous moon 
had set, and presently a fog rolled down the river, 
blotting out landscape and stars and making even 
these willows dim and unreal. Ideal conditions ! Now 
if their guest of honor, with or without his friend, 
would but stop at this pool to wash the Stock-Landing 
muck from his horse’s shins — but even luck has its 
limits. 

Nevertheless, that is what occurred. A hum of 
voices — a tread of hoofs — and the very man hoped for 
— he and Hilary Kincaid — recognized by their voices — 
dismounted at the pool’s margin. Sam and Maxime 
stole forward. 


32 


One Killed 


VIII 

ONE KILLED 

The newcomers’ talk, as they crouched busily over 
their horses’ feet, was on random themes: Dan Rice, 
John Owens, Adelina and Carlotta Patti, the compara- 
tive merits of Victor’s and Moreau’s restaur’ — hah! 
Greenleaf snatched up his light cane, sprang erect, and 
gazed close into the mild eyes of Maxime. Gibbs’s 
more wanton regard had no such encounter; Hilary 
gave him a mere upward glance while his hands con- 
tinued their task. 

“Good-evening,” remarked Gibbs. 

“Good-morning,” chirped Hilary, and scrubbed on. 
“Do you happen to be Mr. Samuel Gibbs ? — Don’t stop, 
Fred, Maxime won’t object to your working on.” 

“Yes, he will!” swore Gibbs, “and so will I!” 

Still Hilary scrubbed: “Why so, Mr. Gibbs?” 

“Bic-ause,” put in Maxime, “he’s got to go back 
through the same mud he came!” 

“Why, then,” laughed Hilary, “I may as well knock 
off, too,” and began to wash his hands. 

“No,” growled Gibbs, “you’ll ride on; we’re not 
here for you.” 

“You can’t have either of us without the other, Mr. 
Gibbs,” playfully remarked Kincaid. The bull-drivers 
loomed out of the fog. Hilary leisurely rose and moved 
to draw a handkerchief. 

“None o’ that!” cried Gibbs, whipping his repeater 
into Kincaid’s face. Yet the handkerchief came forth, 
its owner smiling playfully and drying his fingers while 

33 


Kincaid’s Battery 

Mr. Gibbs went on blasphemously to declare himself 
“no chicken.” 

“Oh, no,” laughed Hilary, “none of us is quite that. 
But did you ever really study — boxing ? ” At the last 
word Gibbs reeled under a blow in the face; his re- 
volver, going off harmlessly, was snatched from him, 
Maxime’s derringer missed also, and Gibbs swayed, 
bleeding and sightless, from Hilary’s blows with the 
butt of the revolver. Presently down he lurched in- 
sensible, Hilary going half-way with him but recovering 
and turning to the aid of his friend. Maxime tore loose 
from his opponent, beseeching the bull-drivers to at- 
tack, but beseeching in vain. Squawking and chatter- 
ing like parrot and monkey, they spurred forward, 
whirled back, gathered lassos, cursed frantically as 
Sam fell, sped off into the fog, spurred back again, and 
now reined their ponies to their haunches, while Kin- 
caid halted Maxime with Gibbs’s revolver, and Green- 
leaf sprang to the bits of his own and Hilary’s terrified 
horses. For two other men, the Gascon and the 
Italian, had glided into the scene from the willows, and 
the Gascon was showing Greenleaf two big knives, one 
of which he fiercely begged him to accept. 

“Take it, Fred!” cried Hilary while he advanced on 
the defiantly retreating Maxime; but as he spoke a 
new cry of the drovers turned his glance another way. 
Gibbs had risen to his knees unaware that the Italian, 
with yet another knife, was close behind him. At a 
bound Hilary arrested the lifted blade and hurled its 
wielder aside, who in the next breath seemed to spring 
past him head first, fell prone across the prostrate 
Gibbs, turned face upward, and slid on and away 

34 


One Killed 

— lassoed. Both bull-drivers clattered off up the 

road. 

“Hang to the nags, Fred!” cried Hilary, and let 
Maxime leap to Gibbs’s side, but seized the Gascon as 
with murderous intent he sprang after him. It took 
Kincaid’s strength to hold him, and Gibbs and his 
partner would have edged away, but — “Stand!” called 
Hilary, and they stood, Gibbs weak and dazed, yet still 
spouting curses. The Gascon begged in vain to be al- 
lowed to follow the bull-drivers. 

“Stay here!” said Hilary in French, and the butcher 
tarried. Hilary passed the revolver to his friend, 
mounted and dashed up the highway. 

The Gascon stayed with a lively purpose which the 
enfeebled Gibbs was the first to see. “ Stand back, you 
hell-hound ! ” cried the latter, and with fresh oaths bade 
Greenleaf “keep him off!” 

Maxime put Gibbs on Greenleaf’s horse (as bidden), 
and was about to lead him, when Kincaid galloped 
back. 

“Fred,” exclaimed Hilary, “they’ve killed the poor 
chap.” He wheeled. “Come, all hands,” he con- 
tinued, and to Greenleaf added as they went, “He’s 
lying up here in the road with ” 

Greenleaf picked up something. “Humph!” said 
Hilary, receiving it, “knives by the great gross. He 
must have used this trying to cut the lasso; the one 
he had back yonder flew into the pond.” He reined 
in: “Here’s where they — Why, Fred — why, I’ll swear! 
They’ve come back and — Stop! there was a skiff” — 
he moved to the levee and peered over — “It’s gone!” 

The case was plain, and while from Greenleaf’s 

35 


Kincaid’s Battery 

saddle Gibbs broke into frantic revilings of the fugitives 
for deserting him and Maxime to sink their dead in the 
mid-current of the fog-bound river, Kincaid and his 
friend held soft counsel. Evidently the drovers had 
turned their horses loose, knowing they would go to 
their stable. No despatch to stop Greenleaf could be 
sent by anyone up the railroad till the Committee of 
Public Safety had authorized it, so Hilary would drop 
them a line out of his pocket note-book, and by day- 
break these prisoners could go free. 

“Mr. Gibbs” — he said as he wrote — “I have the 
sprout of a notion that you and Mr. Lafontaine would 
be an ornament to a field-battery I’m about to take 
command of. I’d like to talk with you about that 
presently.” He tore out the page he had written and 
beckoned the Gascon aside: 

“Mon ami ” — he showed a roll of “city money” and 
continued in French — “do you want to make a hun- 
dred dollars — fifty now and fifty when you bring me an 
answer to this?” 

The man nodded and took the missive. 

The old “Jackson Railroad” avoided Carrollton and 
touched the river for a moment only, a short way 
beyond, at a small bunch of flimsy clapboard houses 
called Kennerville. Here was the first stop of its early 
morning outbound train, and here a dozen or so pas- 
sengers always poked their heads out of the windows. 
This morning they saw an oldish black man step off, 
doff his hat delightedly to two young men waiting at 
the platform’s edge, pass them a ticket, and move 
across to a pair of saddled horses. The smaller of the 
36 


Her Harpoon Strikes 

pair stepped upon the last coach, but kept his com- 
panion’s hand till the train had again started. 

“Good-by, Tony,” cried the one left behind. 

“ Good-by, Jake,” called the other, and waved. His 
friend watched the train vanish into the forest. Then, 
as his horse was brought, he mounted and moved back 
toward the city. 

Presently the negro, on the other horse, came up 
almost abreast of him. “ Mahs’ Hil’ry ? ” he ventured. 

“Well, uncle Jerry?” 

“Dat’s a pow’ful good-lookin’ suit o’ clo’es what 
L’tenant Greenfeel got awn.” 

“Jerry! you cut me to the heart!” 

The negro tittered: “Oh, as to dat, I don’t ’spute 
but yone is betteh.” 

The master heaved a comforted sigh. The ser- 
vant tittered again, but suddenly again was grave. “ I 
on’y wish to Gawd,” he slowly said, “dat de next time 
you an’ him meet ” 

“Well — next time we meet — what then?” 

“ Dat you bofe be in de same sawt o’ clo’es like you 
got on now.” 

IX 

HER HARPOON STRIKES 

The home of the Callenders was an old Creole colo- 
nial plantation-house, large, square, strong, of two 
stories over a stoutly piered basement, and surrounded 
by two broad verandas, one at each story, beneath a 
great hip roof gracefully upheld on Doric columns. It 
bore that air of uncostly refinement which is one of the 

37 


Kincaid’s Battery 

most pleasing outward features of the aloof civilization 
to which it, though not the Callenders, belonged. 

Inside, its aspect was exceptional. There the inornate 
beauty of its finish, the quiet abundance of its delicate 
woodwork, and the high spaciousness and continuity of 
its rooms for entertainment won admiration and fame. 
A worthy setting, it was called, for the gentle manners 
with which the Callenders made it alluring. 

They, of course, had not built it. The late Judge 
had acquired it from the descendants of a planter of 
indigo and coffee who in the oldest Creole days had 
here made his home and lived his life as thoroughly in 
the ancient baronial spirit as if the Mississippi had been 
the mediaeval Rhine. Only its perfect repair was the 
Judge’s touch, a touch so modestly true as to give it a 
charm of age and story which the youth and beauty of 
the Callender ladies only enhanced, enhancing it the 
more through their lack of a male protector — because 
of which they were always going to move into town, but 
never moved. 

Here, some nine or ten days after Greenleaf’s flight, 
Hilary Kincaid, in uniform at last, was one of two 
evening visitors, the other being Mandeville. In the 
meantime our lover of nonsense had received a ‘‘hard 
jolt.” So he admitted in a letter to his friend, 
boasting, however, that it was unattended by any 
“internal injury.” In the circuit of a single week, 
happening to be thrown daily and busily into “her” 
society, “the harpoon had struck.” 

He chose the phrase as an honest yet delicate re- 
minder of the compact made when last the two chums 
had ridden together. 


38 


Her Harpoon Strikes 

All three of the Callenders were in the evening group, 
and the five talked about an illumination of the city, 
set for the following night. In the business centre the 
front of every building was already being hung with 
fittings from sidewalk to cornice. So was to be cele- 
brated the glorious fact (Constance and Mandeville’s 
adjective) that in the previous month Louisiana had 
seized all the forts and lighthouses in her borders and 
withdrawn from the federal union by a solemn ordi- 
nance signed in tears. This great lighting up, said 
Hilary, was to be the smile of fortitude after the tears. 
Over the city hall now floated daily the new flag of the 
state, with the colors of its stripes 

“Reverted to those of old Spain,” murmured Anna, 
mainly to herself yet somewhat to Hilary. Judge Cal- 
lender had died a Whig, and politics interested the 
merest girls those days. 

Even at the piano, where Anna played and Hilary 
hovered, in pauses between this of Mozart and that of 
Mendelssohn, there was much for her to ask and him 
to tell about; for instance, the new “Confederate 
States,” a bare fortnight old! Would Virginia come 
into them? Eventually, yes. 

“Oh, yes, yes, yes!” cried Constance, overhearing. 
(Whatever did not begin with oh, those times, began 
with ah.) 

“And must war follow?” The question was Anna’s 
again, and Hilary sat down closer to answer con- 
fidentially : 

“Yes, the war was already a fact.” 

“And might not the Abolitionists send their ships 
and soldiers against New Orleans?” 

39 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“Yes, the case was supposable.” 

“And might not Jackson’s battlefield of 1815, in 
close view from these windows, become a new one ? ” 

To avoid confessing that old battlefields have that 
tendency the Captain rose and took up a guitar; but 
when he would have laid it on her knee she pushed it 
away and asked the song of him; asked with something 
intimate in her smiling undertone that thrilled him, 
yet on the next instant seemed pure dream stuff. The 
others broke in and Constance begged a song of the new 
patriotism; but Miranda, the pretty stepmother, spoke 
rather for something a thousand miles and months 
away from the troubles and heroics of the hour; and 
when Anna seconded this motion by one fugitive glance 
worth all their beseechings Hilary, as he stood, gayly 
threw open his smart jacket lest his brass buttons mar 
the instrument, and sang with a sudden fervor that 
startled and delighted all the group: 

“Drink to me only with thine eyes.” 

In the midst of which Constance lifted a knowing 
look across to Miranda, and Miranda sent it back. 

There was never an evening that did not have to end, 
and at last the gentlemen began to make a show of 
leaving. But then came a lively chat, all standing in 
a bunch. To-morrow’s procession, the visitors said, 
would form in Canal Street, move up St. Charles, return 
down Camp Street into Canal, pass through it into 
Rampart, take the Bayou Road and march to a grand 
review away out in the new camp of instruction at the 
Creole Race-Course. Intermediately, from a certain 
Canal Street balcony, Flora would present the flag! 

40 


Sylvia Sighs 

the gorgeous golden, silken, satin battle standard which 
the Callenders and others had helped her to make. So 
— good-night — good-night. 

The last parting was with Mandeville, at the levee- 
road gate, just below which he lived in what, during 
the indigo-planter’s life, had been the overseer’s cottage. 
At a fine stride our artillerist started townward, his 
horse being stabled near by in that direction. But 
presently he halted, harkened after the Creole’s reced- 
ing step, thought long, softly called himself names, and 
then did a small thing which, although it resulted in 
nothing tragic at the time, marked a turning point in 
his life. He leapt the grove fence, returned to the 
shadows of the garden, and silently made his way to 
its eastern, down-river side. Already the dwelling’s 
lower lights were going out while none yet shone above, 
and he paused in deep shade far enough away to see, 
over its upper veranda’s edge, the tops of its chamber 
windows. 

X 

SYLVIA SIGHS 

The house was of brick. So being, in a land where 
most dwellings are of wood, it had gathered beauty 
from time and dignity from tried strength, and with 
satisfying grace joined itself to its grounds, whose 
abundance and variety of flowering, broad-leaved ever- 
greens lent, in turn, a poetic authenticity to its Greek 
columns and to the Roman arches of its doors and win- 
dows. Especially in these mild, fragrant, blue nights 
was this charm potent, and the fair home seemed to its 
4i 


Kincaid’s Battery 

hidden beholder forever set apart from the discords and 
distresses of a turbulent world. And now an upper 
window brightened, its sash went up, and at the 
veranda’s balustrade Anna stood outlined against the 
inner glow. 

She may have intended but one look at the stars, 
but they and the spiced air were enchanting, and in 
confidence that no earthly eye was on her she tarried, 
gazing out to the farthest gleam of the river where it 
swung southward round the English Turn. 

Down in the garden a mirthful ecstasy ran through 
all the blood of her culprit observer and he drank to 
her only with his eyes. Against the window’s bright- 
ness her dark outline showed true, and every smallest 
strand of her hair that played along the contours of 
brow and head changed his merriment to reverence 
and bade his heart recognize how infinitely distant from 
his was her thought. Hilary Kincaid ! can you read no 
better than that ? 

Her thought was of him. Her mind’s eye saw him 
on his homeward ride. It marked the erectness of his 
frame, the gayety of his mien, the dance of his locks. 
By her inner ear she heard his horse’s tread passing up 
the narrow round-stone pavements of the Creole 
Quarter, presently to echo in old St. Peter Street under 
the windows of Pontalba Row — one of which was 
Flora’s. Would it ring straight on, or would it pause 
between that window and the orange and myrtle 
shades of Jackson Square? Constance had said that 
day to Miranda — for this star-gazer to overhear — that 
she did not believe Kincaid loved Flora, and the hearer 
had longed to ask her why, but knew she could not tell. 

42 


Sylvia Sighs 

Why is a man’s word. “They’re as helpless without 
it,” the muser recalled having very lately written on a 
secret page, “as women are before it. And yet a girl 
can be very hungry, at times, for a why. They say 
he’s as brave as a lion — why is he never brave to 
me?” 

So futilely ended the strain on the remembered page, 
but while his unsuspected gaze abode on her lifted eyes 
her thought prolonged the note: “If he meant love to- 
night, why did he not stand to his meaning when I 
laughed it away? Was that for his friend’s sake, or is 
he only not brave enough to make one wild guess 
at me ? Ah, I bless Heaven he’s the kind that cannot ! 
And still — oh, Hilary Kincaid, if you were the girl and 
I the man! I shouldn’t be on my way home; I’d be 
down in this garden — ” She slowly withdrew. 

Hilary, stepping back to keep her in sight, was sud- 
denly aware of the family coachman close at his side. 
Together they moved warily a few steps farther. 

“You mus’ escuse me, Cap’n,” the negro amiably 
whispered. “You all right, o’ co’se! Yit dese days, 
wid no white gen’leman apputtainin’ onto de place— — ” 

“Old man!” panted Hilary, “you’ve saved my life!” 

“Oh, my Lawd, no! Cap’n, I ” 

“Yes, you have! I was just going into fits! Now 
step in and fetch me out here — ” He shaped his arms 
fantastically and twiddled his fingers. 

Bending with noiseless laughter the negro nodded and 
went. 

Just within her window, Anna, still in reverie, sat 
down at a slender desk, unlocked a drawer, then a 
second one inside it, and drew forth — no mere secret 

43 


Kincaid’s Battery 

page but — a whole diary! “To Anna, from Miranda, 
Christmas, i860.” Slowly she took up a pen, as 
gradually laid it by again, and opposite various dates 
let her eyes rest on — not this, though it was still 
true: 

“The more we see of Flora, the more we like her.” 

Nor this: “Heard a great, but awful, sermon on the 
duty of resisting Northern oppression.” 

But this: “Connie thinks he ‘inclines’ to me. Ho! 
all he’s ever said has been for his far-away friend. I 
wish he would incline, or else go ten times as far away! 
Only not to the war — God forbid! Ah, me, how I 
long for his inclining! And while I long he laughs, 
and the more he laughs the more I long, for I never, 
never so doted on any one’s laugh. Oh, shame ! to love 
before ” 

What sound was that below? No mocking-bird 
note, no south wind in the foliage, but the kiss of fingers 
on strings! Warily it stole in at the window, while 
softly as an acacia the diary closed its leaves. The bent 
head stirred not, but a thrill answered through the 
hearer’s frame as a second cadence ventured up and in 
and a voice followed it in song. Tremblingly the book 
slid into the drawer, inner and outer lock clicked whis- 
peringly, and gliding to a door she harkened for any step 
of the household, while she drank the strains, her 
bosom heaving with equal alarm and rapture. 

If any song is good which serves a lover’s ends we 
need claim no more for the one that rose to Anna on the 
odors of the garden and drove her about the room, 
darting, clinging, fluttering, returning, like her own 
terrified bird above her in its cage. 

44 


Sylvia Sighs 

When Sylvia sighs 
And veils the worshipped wonder 
Of her blue eyes 
Their sacred curtains under, 

Naught can so nigh please me as my tender anguish. 

Only grief can ease me while those lashes languish. 

Woe best beguiles; 

Mirth, wait thou other whiles; 

Thou shalt borrow all my sorrow 
When Sylvia smiles. 

But what a strange effect! Could this be that Anna 
Callender who “would no more ever again seem small 
than the ocean ?” Is this that maiden of the “belated, 
gradual smile” whom the singer himself so lately named 
“a profound pause?” Your eyes, fair girl, could 
hardly be more dilated if they saw riot, fire, or ship- 
wreck. Nor now could your brow show more exalta- 
tion responsive to angels singing in the sun; nor now 
your frame show more affright though soldiers were 
breaking in your door. Anna, Anna! your fingers are 
clenched in your palms, and in your heart one frenzy 
implores the singer to forbear, while another bids him 
sing on though the heavens fall. Anna Callender! do 
you not know this? You have dropped into a chair, 
you grip the corners of your desk. Now you are up 
again, trembling and putting out your lights. And now 
you seek to relight them, but cannot remember the place 
or direction of anything, and when you have found out 
what you were looking for, do not know how much 
time has flown, except that the song is still in its first 
stanza. Are you aware that your groping hand has 
seized and rumpled into its palm a long strand of 
slender ribbon lately unwound from your throat ? 

45 


Kincaid’s Battery 

A coy tap sounds on her door and she glides to it. 
“Who — who?” But in spite of her it opens to the 
bearer of a lamp, her sister Constance. 

“Who — who — ?” she mocks in soft glee. “That’s 
the question! ‘Who is Sylvia?’” 

“Don’t try to come in! I — I — the floor is all strewn 
with matches!” 

The sister’s mirth vanishes: “Why, Nan! what is 
the matter?” 

“Do-on’t whisper so loud! He’s right out there!” 

“But, dearie! it’s nothing but a serenade.” 

“It’s an outrage, Con! How did he ever know — 
how did he dare to know — this was my window ? Oh, 
put out that lamp or he’ll think I lighted it — No! no! 
don’t put it out, he’ll think I did that, too!” 

“Why, Nan! you never in your life ” 

“Now, Connie, that isn’t fair! I won’t stay with 
you!” The speaker fled. Constance put out the light. 

A few steps down and across a hall a soft sound 
broke, and Anna stood in Miranda’s doorway wearing 
her most self-contained smile: “Dearie!” she quietly 
said, “isn’t it too ridiculous!” 

Miranda crinkled a smile so rife with love and in- 
sight that Anna’s eyes suddenly ran full and she glided 
to her knees by the seated one and into her arms, mur- 
muring, “You ought both of you to be ashamed of 
yourselves! You’re totally mistaken!” 

Presently, back in the dusk of her own room, an 
audible breathing betrayed her return, and Constance 
endeavoured to slip out, but Anna clung: “You sha’n’t 
go! You sha’ — ” Yet the fugitive easily got away. 

Down among the roses a stanza had just ended. 

46 


In Column of Platoons 


Anna tiptoed out half across the dim veranda, tossed 
her crumpled ribbon over the rail, flitted back, bent 
an ear, and knew by a brief hush of the strings that 
the token had drifted home. 

The die was cast. From brow and heart fled all 
perturbation and once more into her eyes came their 
wonted serenity — with a tinge of exultation — while the 
strings sounded again, and again rose the song: 

When Sylvia smiles 
Her eyes to mine inclining, 

Like azure isles 
In seas of lovelight shining, 

With a merry madness find I endless pleasure — 

Till she sighs — then sadness is my only treasure. 

Woe best beguiles; 

Mirth, wait thou other whiles, 

Thou shalt borrow all my sorrow 
When Sylvia smiles. 


XI 

IN COLUMN OF PLATOONS 

Love’s war was declared. From hour to hour of 
that night and the next morning, in bed, at board, 
dressing for the thronged city, spinning with Constance 
and Miranda up Love Street across Piety and Desire 
and on into the town’s centre, Anna, outwardly all 
peace, planned that war’s defensive strategy. Splen- 
didly maidenly it should be, harrowingly arduous to 
the proud invader, and long drawn out. Constance 
should see what a man can be put through. But oh, 
but oh, if, after all, the invasion should not come! 

47 


Kincaid’s Battery 

In those days New Orleans paved her favorite 
streets, when she paved them at all, with big blocks of 
granite two feet by one. They came from the North as 
ballast in those innumerable wide-armed ships whose 
cloud of masts and cordage inspiringly darkened the 
sky of that far-winding river-front where we lately saw 
Hilary Kincaid and Fred Greenleaf ride. Beginning 
at the great steamboat landing, half a mile of Canal 
Street had such a pavement on either side of its broad 
grassy “neutral ground.” So had the main streets 
that led from it at right angles. Long afterward, even 
as late as when the Nineteenth Century died, some of 
those streets were at the funeral, clad in those same old 
pavements, worn as smooth and ragged as a gentleman- 
beggar’s coat. St. Charles Street was one. Another 
was the old Rue Royale, its squat ground-floor domiciles 
drooping their mossy eaves half across the pinched 
sidewalks and confusedly trying to alternate and align 
themselves with tall brick houses and shops whose 
ample two- and three-story balconies were upheld, 
balustraded, and overhung by slender garlandries of 
iron openwork as graceful and feminine as a lace man- 
tilla. With here and there the flag of a foreign consul 
hanging out and down, such is the attire the old street 
was vain of in that golden time when a large square sign 
on every telegraph pole bade you get your shirts at 
S. N. Moody’s, corner of Canal and Royal Streets. 

At this corner, on the day after the serenade, there 
was a dense, waiting crowd. On the other corner of 
Royal, where the show-windows of Hyde & Goodrich 
blazed with diamonds, and their loftily nested gold 
pelican forever fed her young from her bleeding breast, 
48 


In Column of Platoons 

stood an equal throng. Across Canal Street, where St. 
Charles opens narrowly southward, were similar masses, 
and midway between the four corners the rising circles of 
stone steps about the high bronze figure of Henry Clay 
were hidden by men and boys packed as close as they 
could sit or stand. A great procession had gone up- 
town and would by and by return. Near and far ban- 
ners and pennons rose and fell on the luxurious air, and 
the ranks and ranks of broad and narrow balconies 
were so many gardens of dames and girls, parasols, and 
diaphanous gowns. Near the front of the lowest Hyde 
& Goodrich balcony, close by the gilded pelican, sat 
the Callenders, all gladness, holding mute dialogues 
with Flora and Madame Valcour here on the balcony of 
Moody’s corner. It was the birthday of Washington. 

Not of him, however, did Flora and her grandmother 
softly converse in Spanish amid the surrounding babel 
of English and French. Their theme was our battery 
drill of some ten days before, a subject urged upon 
Flora by the mosquito-like probings of Madame’s 
musically whined queries. Better to be bled of almost 
any information by the antique little dame than to 
have her light on it some other way, as she had an 
amazing knack of doing. Her acted part of things 
Flora kept untold; but grandma’s spirit of divination 
could unfailingly supply that, and her pencilled brows, 
stiff as they were, could tell the narrator she had done 
so. 

Thus now, Flora gave no hint of the beautiful skill 
and quick success with which, on her homeward rail- 
way trip with Greenleaf that evening, she had bettered 
his impressions of her. By no more than a gentle play 

49 


Kincaid’s Battery 

of light and shade in her smile and an undulating 
melody of voice — without a word that touched the 
wound itself, but with a timid glow of compassionate 
admiration — she had soothed the torture of a heart 
whose last hope Anna had that same hour put to 
death. 

“But before he took the train with you,” murmured 
the mosquito to the butterfly, “when he said the General 
was going to take Irby upon his staff and give the 
battery to Kincaid, what did you talk of?” 

“Talk of? Charlie. He said I ought to make 
Charlie join the battery.” 

“Ah? For what? To secure Kincaid’s protection 
of your dear little brother’s health — character — morals 
— eh ?” 

“Yes, ’twas so he put it,” replied Flora, while the 
old lady’s eyebrows visibly cried : 

“You sly bird! will you impute all your own words 
to that Yankee, and his to yourself?” 

Which is just what Flora continued to do as the 
grandma tinkled: “And you said — what?” 

“I said if I couldn’t keep him at home I ought to 
get him into the cavalry. You know, dear, in the in- 
fantry the marches are so cruel, the camps so ” 

“But in the artillery,” piped the small dame, “they 
ride, eh?” (It was a trap she was setting, but in vain 
was the net spread.) 

“No,” said the serene girl, “they, too, go afoot. 
Often they must help the horses drag the guns through 
the mire. Only on parade they ride, or when rushing 
to and fro in battle, whips cracking, horses plunging, 
the hills smoking and shaking!” The rare creature 
5o 


In Column of Platoons 

sparkled frankly, seeing the battery whirling into action 
with its standard on the wind — this very flag she ex- 
pected presently to bestow. 

“And with Kincaid at the head!” softly cried the 
antique. 

The girl put on a fondness which suddenly became a 
withering droop of the eyes: “Don’t mince your smile 
so, grannie dear, I can hear the paint crack.” 

The wee relic flashed, yet instantly was bland again: 
“You were about to say, however, that in the artil- 
lery ?” 

“The risks are the deadliest of all.” 

“Ah, yes!” sang the mosquito, “and for a sister to 
push her boy brother into a battery under such a com- 
mander would be too much like murder!” 

The maiden felt the same start as when Greenleaf 
had ventured almost those words. “Yes,” she beam- 
ingly rejoined, “that’s what I told the Lieutenant.” 

“With a blush?” 

“No,” carelessly said the slender beauty, and ex- 
changed happy signals with the Callenders. 

“You tricksy wretch!” muttered the grandmother to 
herself. For though Charlie was in the battery by his 
own choice, Hilary would have kept him out had not 
the sister begged to have him let in. 

Suddenly there was a glad stoppage of all by-play in 
the swarming streets. Down St. Charles from LaFayette 
Square came the shock of saluting artillery, and up 
Royal from Jackson Square rolled back antiphonal 
thunders. 

“ Grandma!” softly cried Flora, as if sharing the gen- 
eral elation, but had begun again to tell of Greenleaf, 
5i 


Kincaid’s Battery 

when from far over in Camp Street her subtle ear caught 
a faint stray sigh of saxhorns. 

“Well? well? about the Yankee — ?” urged Madame. 

“Oh, a trifle! He was to go that night, and thinking 
he might some day return in very different fashion and 
we be glad to make use of him, I — ” The speaker’s 
lithe form straightened and her gaze went off to the 
left. “Here they come ! ” she said, and out where Camp 
Street emerges, a glint of steel, a gleam of brass, a 
swarming of the people that way, and again a shimmer 
of brass and steel, affirmed her word that the long, 
plumed, bristling column had got back to the arms of 
its darling Canal Street. 

“Yes,” cried many, “they’re turning this way!” 

“Well? — Well?” insisted the old lady amid the rising 
din. “And so you — you?” 

“Be more careful,” murmured the girl. "I told him 
that our convictions — about this war — yours and mine 
— not Charlie’s — are the same as his” 

A charming sight she was, even in that moment of 
public enthusiasm and spectacle, holding the wonder- 
ing stare of her companion with a gayety that seemed 
ready to break into laughter. The dainty Madame 
went limp, and in words as slow and soft as her smile, 
sighed, “You are a genius!” 

“No, only the last thing you would suspect — a good 
housekeeper. I have put him up in sugar.” 

The distant martial strains became more coherent. 
In remote balconies handkerchiefs fluttered wildly, and 
under nearer and nearer ones the people began to pack 
closer and choose their footing along the curb. Pres- 
ently from the approaching column came who but 
52 


In Column of Platoons 

Hilary Kincaid, galloping easily over the slippery pave- 
ments. Anna saw his eyes sweep the bank of human 
flowers (with its occasional male caterpillar) on Moody’s 
balcony and light upon Flora. He lifted his kepi and 
halted. One could read his soft questions. 

“All right? All ready? Where are the others? — 
Ah!” He sent an eager salutation to the Callenders, 
and two joyfully bowed, but Anna gave no sign. With 
great dignity her gaze was bent beyond him on the 
nearing host, and when Constance plucked her arm 
she tardily looked three wrong ways. 

The rider could not wait. The police were pressing 
back the jubilant masses, swarms of ladies on the rear 
forms were standing up, and Flora, still seated, had 
leaned down beamingly and was using every resource 
of voice and fan to send him some word through the 
tumult of plaudits and drums. He spurred close. In 
a favoring hush — drum-corps inviting the band — she 
bent low and with an arch air of bafflement tried once 
more, but an outburst of brazen harmonies tore her 
speech to threads. Suddenly — 

“Ever of thee I’m fondly dreaming — ” 

pealed the cornets, pumped the trombones, whipping it 
out, cracking it off, with a rigor of rhythm to shame 
all peace-time languishments — 

“Thy gentle voice my spirit can cheer. 

Thou art the star — ” 

What could the balconies do but wave more joyously 
than ever? The streets hurrahed! The head of the 
procession was here ! The lone horseman reined back, 
wheeled, cast another vain glance toward Anna, and 

53 


Kincaid’s Battery 

with an alarming rataplan of slipping and recovering 
hoofs sped down the column. 

But what new rapture was this ? Some glorious luck 
had altered the route, and the whole business swung 
right into this old rue Royale! Now, now the merry 
clamor and rush of the crowd righting itself! And 
behold! this blazing staff and its commanding general 
— general of division! He first, and then all they, 
bowed to Flora and her grandmother, bowed to the 
Callenders, and were bowed to in return. A mounted 
escort followed. And now — yea, verily! General 
Brodnax and his staff of brigade! Wave, Valcours, 
wave Callenders! Irby’s bow to Flora was majestic, 
and hers to him as gracious as the smell of flowers in 
the air. And here was Mandeville, most glittering in 
all the glitter. Flora beamed on him as well, Anna 
bowed with a gay fondness, Miranda’s dainty nose 
crimped itself, and Constance, with a blitheness even 
more vivid, wished all these balconies could know that 
Captain — he was Lieutenant, but that was away back 
last week — Captain Etienne Aristide Rofignac de Man- 
deville was hers, whom, after their marriage, now so 
near at hand, she was going always to call Steve! 

XII 

MANDEVILLE BLEEDS 

Two overflowing brigades! In the van came red- 
capped artillery. Not the new battery, though happily 
known to Flora and the Callenders; the Washington 
Artillery. Illustrious command ! platoons and platoons 

54 


Mandeville Bleeds 

of the flower of the Crescent City’s youth and worth! 
They, too, that day received their battle-flag. They 
have the shot-torn rags of it yet. 

Ah, the clanging horns again, and oh, the thundering 
drums! Another uniform, on a mass of infantry, an- 
other band at its head braying another lover’s song 
reduced to a military tramp, swing, and clangor — 

“I’d offer thee this hand of mine 
If I could love thee less — ” 

Every soldier seemed to have become a swain. 
Hilary and Anna had lately sung this wail together, 
but not to its end, she had called it “so ungenuine.” 
How rakishly now it came ripping out. “My fortune is 
too hard for thee,” it declared, “ ’twould chill thy dearest 
joy. I’d rather weep to see thee free,” and ended with 
“destroy”; but it had the swagger of a bowling-alley. 

All the old organizations, some dating back to ’12- 
’15, had lately grown to amazing numbers, while many 
new ones had been so perfectly uniformed, armed, 
accoutred and drilled six nights a week that the ladies, 
in their unmilitary innocence, could not tell the new 
from the old. Except in two cases: Even Anna 
was aware that the “Continentals,” in tasseled top- 
boots, were of earlier times, although they had changed 
their buff knee-breeches and three-cornered hats for a 
smart uniform of blue and gray; while these red-and- 
blue-flannel Zouaves, drawing swarms of boys as dray- 
loads of sugar-hogsheads drew flies, were as modern as 
1861 itself. But oh, ah, one knew so many young men! 
It was wave, bow, smile and bow, smile and wave, till 
the whole frame was gloriously weary. 

55 


Kincaid’s Battery 

Near Anna prattled a Creole girl of sixteen with 
whom she now and then enjoyed a word or so: Victor- 
ine Lafontaine, daughter of our friend Maxime. 

“Louisiana Foot-Rifles — ah! but their true name,” 
she protested, “are the Chasseurs-a-Pied ! ’Twas to 
them my papa billong’ biffo’ he join’ hisseff on the 
batt’rie of Captain Kincaid, and there he’s now a cor- 
poreal!” 

What jaunty fellows they were! and as their faultless 
ranks came close, their glad, buskined feet beating as 
perfect music for the roaring drums as the drums beat 
for them, Anna, in fond ardor, bent low over the rail 
and waved, exhorting Miranda and Constance to wave 
with her. So marched the chasseurs by, but the wide 
applause persisted as yet other hosts, with deafening 
music and perfect step and with bayonets back-slanted 
like the porcupine’s, came on and on, and passed and 
passed, ignoring in grand self-restraint their very loves 
who leaned from the banquettes’ edges and from bal- 
ustraded heights and laughed and boasted and wor- 
shipped. 

Finally artillery again! every man in it loved by 
some one — or dozen — in these glad throngs. Clap! 
call! wave! Oh, gallant sight! These do not enter 
Royal Street. They keep Canal, obliquing to that 
side of the way farthest from the balconies 

“To make room,” cries Victorine, “to form line 
pritty soon off horses, in front those cannon 

At the head rides Kincaid. Then, each in his place, 
lieutenants, sergeants, drivers, the six-horse teams lean- 
ing on the firm traces, the big wheels clucking, the long 
Napoleons shining like gold, and the cannoneers — oh, 

56 


Mandeville Bleeds 

God bless the lads! — planted on limbers and caissons, 
with arms tight folded and backs as plumb as the 
meridian. Now three of the pieces, half the battery, 
have gone by and 

“Well, well, if there isn’t Sam Gibbs, sergeant of a 
gun! It is, I tell you, it is! Sam Gibbs, made over 
new, as sure as a certain monosyllable ! and what could 
be surer, for Sam Gibbs?” 

So laugh the sidewalks; but society, overhead, cares 
not for a made-over Gibbs while round about him are 
sixty or seventy young heroes who need no making 
over. Anna, Anna! what a brave and happy half-and- 
half of Creoles and “Americans” do your moist eyes 
beam down upon : here a Canonge and there an Ogden 
— a Zacherie — a Fontennette — Willie Geddes — Tom 
Norton — a Fusilier! Nat Frellsen — a Tramontana — a 
Grandissime! — and a Grandissime again! Percy Chil- 
ton — a Dudley — Arthur Puig y Puig — a De Armas — 
MacKnight — Violett — Avendano — Rob Rareshide — 
Guy Palfrey — a Morse, a Bien, a Fuentes — a Grand- 
issme once more! Aleck Moise — Ralph Fenner — Ned 
Ferry! — and lo! a Raoul Innerarity, image of his grand- 
father’s portrait — and a Jules St. Ange! a Converse — 
Jack Eustis — two Fro wenf elds! a Mossy! a Hennen — 
Bartie Sloo — McVey, McStea, a De Lavillebuevre — a 
Thorndyke-Smith and a Grandissime again! 

And ah! see yonder young cannoneer half-way be- 
tween these two balconies and the statue beyond ; that 
foppish boy with his hair in a hundred curls and his 
eyes wild with wayward ardor! “Ah, Charlie Val- 
cour!” thinks Anna; “oh, your poor sister!” while the 
eyes of Victorine take him in secretly and her voice is 

57 


Kincaid’s Battery 

still for a whole minute. Hark! From the head of 
the column is wafted back a bugle-note, and every- 
thing stands. 

Now the trim lads relax, the balcony dames in the 
rear rows sit down, there are nods and becks and 
wafted whispers to a Calder and an Avery, to tall Numa 
Dolhonde and short Eugene Chopin, to George Wood 
and Dick Penn and Fenner and Bouligny and Pilcher 
and L’Hommedieu; and Charlie sends up bows and 
smiles, and wipes the beautiful brow he so openly and 
wilfully loves best on earth. Anna smiles back, but 
Constance bids her look at Maxime, Victorine’s father, 
whom neither his long white moustaches nor weight of 
years nor the lawless past revealed in his daring eyes 
can rob of his youth. So Anna looks, and when she 
turns again to Charlie she finds him sending a glance 
rife with conquest — not his first — up to Victorine, who, 
without meeting it, replies — as she has done to each one 
before it — with a dreamy smile into vacancy, and a 
faint narrowing of her almond eyes. 

Captain Kincaid comes ambling back, and right here 
in the throat of Royal Street faces the command. The 
matter is explained to Madame Valcour by a stranger : 

“Now at the captain’s word all the cannoneers will 
spring down, leaving only guns, teams and drivers at 
their back, and line up facing us. The captain will 
dismount and ascend to the balcony, and there he and 
the young lady, whoever she is — ” He waits, hoping 
Madame will say who the young lady is, but Madame 
only smiles for him to proceed — “The captain and she 
will confront each other, she will present the colors, 
he, replying, will receive them, and — ah, after all!” 

58 


Mandeville Bleeds 

The thing had been done without their seeing it, and 
there stood the whole magnificent double line. Cap- 
tain Kincaid dismounted and had just turned from his 
horse when there galloped up Royal Street from the 
vanished procession — Mandeville. Slipping and clat- 
tering, he reined up and saluted: “How soon can Kin- 
caid’s Battery be completely ready to go into camp?” 

“Now, if necessary.” 

“It will receive orders to move at seven to-morrow 
morning!” The Creole’s fervor amuses the rabble, 
and when Hilary smiles his earnestness waxes to 
a frown. Kincaid replies lightly and the rider bends 
the rein to wheel away, but the slippery stones have 
their victim at last. The horse’s feet spread and 
scrabble, his haunches go low. Constance snatches 
both Anna’s hands. Ah ! by good luck the beast is up 
again! Yet again the hoofs slip, the rider reels, and 
Charlie and a comrade dart out to catch him, but he 
recovers. Then the horse makes another plunge and 
goes clear down with a slam and a slide that hurl his 
master to the very sidewalk and make a hundred pale 
women cry out. 

Constance and her two companions bend wildly 
from the balustrade, a sight for a painter. Across the 
way Flora, holding back her grandmother, silently 
leans out, another picture. In the ranks near Charlie 
a disarray continues even after Kincaid has got the 
battered Mandeville again into the saddle, and while 
Mandeville is rejecting sympathy with a begrimed ypt 
haughty smile. 

“Keep back, ladies!” pleads Madame’s late in- 
formant, holding off two or three bodily. “Ladies, sit 

59 


Kincaid’s Battery 

down I Will you please to keep back!” Flora still 
leans out. Some one is melodiously calling: 

“Captain Kincaid!” It is Mrs. Callender. “Cap- 
tain!” she repeats. 

He smiles up and at last meets Anna’s eyes. Flora 
sees their glances — angels ascending and descending — 
and a wee loop of ribbon that peeps from his tightly 
buttoned breast. Otherwise another sight, elsewhere, 
could not have escaped her, though it still escapes 
many. 

“Poor boy!” it causes two women behind her to ex- 
claim, “poor boy!” but Flora pays no heed, for Hilary 
is speaking to the Callenders. 

“Nothing broken but his watch,” he gayly comforts 
them as to Mandeville. 

“ He’s bleeding ! ” moans Constance, very white. But 
Kincaid softly explains in his hollowed hands : 

“Only his nose!” 

The nose’s owner casts no upward look. Not his to 
accept pity, even from a fiancee. His handkerchief 
dampened “to wibe the faze,” two bits of wet paper 
“to plug the noztril’,” — he could allow no more! 

“First blood of the war!” said Hilary. 

“ Yez! But” — the flashing warrior tapped his sword 
— “nod the last!” and was off at a gallop, while Kin- 
caid turned hurriedly to find that Charlie, struck by 
the floundering horse, had twice fainted away. 

In the balconies the press grew dangerous. An 
urchin intercepted Kincaid to show him the Callenders, 
who, with distressed eyes, pointed him to their carriage 
hurrying across Canal Street. 

“For Charlie and Flora!” called Anna. They could 
60 


Mandeville Bleeds 

not stir “themselves” for the crush; but yonder, on 
Moody’s side, the same kind citizen noticed before had 
taken matters in hand: 

“Keep back, ladies! Make room! Let these two 
ladies out!” He squeezed through the pack, holding 
aloft the furled colors, which all this time had been 
lying at Flora’s feet. Her anxious eyes were on them 
at every second step as she pressed after him with 
the grandmother dangling from her elbow. 

The open carriage spun round the battery’s right 
and up its front to where a knot of comrades hid the 
prostrate Charlie; the surgeon, Kincaid, and Flora 
crouching at his side, the citizen from the balcony still 
protecting grandmamma, and the gilded eagle of the un- 
presented standard hovering over all. With tender 
ease Hilary lifted the sufferer and laid him on the 
carriage’s front seat, the surgeon passed Madame in 
and sat next to her, but to Kincaid Flora exclaimed 
with a glow of heroic distress : 

“Let me go later — with Anna!” Her eyes over- 
flowed — she bit her lip — “I must present the flag!” 

A note of applause started, a protest hushed it, and 
the overbending Callenders and the distracted Victorine 
heard Hilary admiringly say: 

“Come! Go! You belong with your brother!” 

He pressed her in. For an instant she stood while 
the carriage turned, a hand outstretched toward the 
standard, saying to Hilary something that was drowned 
by huzzas; then despairingly she sank into her seat 
and was gone down Royal Street. 

“Attention!” called a lieutenant, and the ranks were 
in order. To the holder of the flag Hilary pointed out 
61 


Kincaid’s Battery 

Anna, lingered for a word with his subaltern, and then 
followed the standard to the Callenders’ balcony. 

XIII 

THINGS ANNA COULD NOT WRITE 

“Charlie has two ribs broken, but is doing well,” 
ran a page of the diary; “so well that Flora and Ma- 
dame — who bears fatigue wonderfully — let Captain 
Irby take them, in the evening, to see the illumination. 
For the thunderstorm, which sent us whirling home at 
midday, was followed by a clear evening sky and an air 
just not too cool to be fragrant. 

“I cannot write. My thoughts jostle one another 
out of all shape, like the women in that last crush after 
the flag-presentation. I begged not to have to take 
Flora’s place from her. It was like snatching jewels 
off her. I felt like a robber ! But in truth until I had 
the flag actually in my hand I thought we were only 
being asked to take care of it for a later day. The 
storm had begun to threaten. Some one was trying 
to say to me — ‘off to camp and then to the front,’ 
and — ‘must have the flag now,’ and still I said, ‘No, 
oh, no!’ But before I could get any one to add a 
syllable there was the Captain himself with the three 
men of the color guard behind him, the middle one 
Victorine’s father. I don’t know how I began, but 
only that I went on and on in some wild way till I 
heard the applause all about and beneath me, and 
he took the colors from me, and the first gust of the 
storm puffed them half open — gorgeously — and the 
62 


Things Anna Could Not Write 

battery hurrahed. And then came his part. He — I 
cannot write it.” 

Why not, the diary never explained, but what oc- 
curred was this: 

“Ladies and gentlemen and comrades in arms!” 
began Hilary and threw a superb look all round, but 
the instant he brought it back to Anna, it quailed, and 
he caught his breath. Then he nerved up again. To 
help his courage and her own she forced herself to gaze 
straight into his eyes, but reading the affright in hers 
he stood dumb and turned red. 

He began again: “Ladies and gentlemen and com- 
rades in arms!” and pulled his moustache, and smote 
and rubbed his brow, and suddenly drove his hand into 
an inside pocket and snatched out a slip of paper. But 
what should come trailing out with it but a long loop of 
ribbon ! As he pushed it back he dropped the paper, 
which another whiff of wind flirted straight over his 
head, sent it circling and soaring clear above Moody’s 
store and dropped it down upon the roof. And there 
gazed Anna and all that multitude, utterly blank, until 
the martyr himself burst into a laugh. Then a thousand 
laughs pealed as one, and he stood smiling and stroking 
back his hair, till his men began to cry, “song! song!” 

Upon that he raised the flag high in one hand, let it 
balloon to the wind, made a sign of refusal, and all at 
once poured out a flood of speech — pledges to Anna 
and her fellow-needlewomen — charges to his men — 
hopes for the cherished cause — words so natural and 
unadorned, so practical and soldier-like, and yet so 
swift, that not a breath was drawn till he had ended. 
But then what a shout! 


6 3 


Kincaid’s Battery 

It was over in a moment. The great black cloud 
that had been swelling up from the south gave its first 
flash and crash, and everybody started pell-mell for 
home. The speaker stood just long enough for a last 
bow to Anna while the guard went before him with the 
colors. Then he hurried below and had the whole 
battery trotting down Canal Street and rounding back 
on its farther side, with the beautiful standard fluttering 
to the storm, before the Callenders could leave the 
balcony. 

Canal Street that evening was a veritable fairyland. 
When, growing tired of their carriage, the Callenders 
and Mandeville walked, and Kincaid unexpectedly 
joined them, fairyland was the only name he could find 
for it, and Anna, in response, could find none at all. 
Mallard’s, Zimmerman’s, Clark’s, Levois’s, Larous- 
sini’s, Moody’s, Hyde & Goodrich’s, and even old 
Piffet’s were all aglow. One cannot recount half. 
Every hotel, every club-house, all the theatres, all the 
consul’s offices in Royal and Carondelet streets, the 
banks everywhere, Odd Fellows’ Hall — with the Con- 
tinentals giving their annual ball in it — and so forth 
and so on! How the heart was exalted! 

But when the heart is that way it is easy to say things 
prematurely, and right there in Canal Street Hilary 
spoke of love. Not personally, only at large; although 
when Anna restively said no woman should ever give 
her heart where she could not give a boundless and un- 
shakable trust, his eyes showed a noble misery while 
he exclaimed: 

“Oh, but there are women of whom no man can ever 
deserve that!” There his manner was all at once so 
64 


Things Anna Could Not Write 

personal that she dared not be silent, but fell to general- 
izing, with many a stammer, that a woman ought to 
be very slow to give her trust if, once giving it, she 
would not rather die than doubt. 

“Do you believe there are such women?” he asked. 

“I know there are,” she said, her eyes lifted to his, 
but the next instant was so panic-smitten and shamed 
that she ran into a lamp-post. And when he called 
that his fault her denial was affirmative in its feeble- 
ness, and with the others she presently resumed the 
carriage and said good-night. 

“Flippantly!” thought the one left alone on the 
crowded sidewalk. 

Yet — “It is I who am going to have the hardest of 
it,” said the diary a short hour after. “Fve always 
thought that when the right one came I’d never give in 
the faintest bit till I had put him to every test and task 
and delay I could invent. And now I can’t invent one ! 
His face quenches doubt, and if he keeps on this way — 
Ah, Flora ! is he anything to you ? Every time he speaks 
my heart sees you. I see you now ! And somehow — 
since Charlie’s mishap — more yours than his if ” 

For a full minute the pen hovered over the waiting 
page, then gradually left it and sank to rest on its silver 
rack. 


6 S 


XIV 

FLORA taps grandma’s cheek 

Meanwhile, from a cluster of society folk sipping 
ices at “Vincent’s” balcony tables, corner of Caron- 
delet Street (where men made the most money), and 
Canal (where women spent the most), Flora and her 
grandmother, in Irby’s care, made their way down to 
the street. 

Kincaid, once more on horseback with General 
Brodnax, saw them emerge beside his cousin’s hired 
carriage, and would have hurried to them, if only to 
inquire after the injured boy; but the General gave 
what he was saying a detaining energy. It was of 
erecting certain defences behind Mobile; of the scarcity 
of military engineers; and of his having, to higher 
authority, named Hilary for the task. The Captain 
could easily leave the battery in camp for a day or two, 
take the Mobile boat — He ceased an instant and 
scowled, as Hilary bowed across the way. 

There was a tender raillery in the beam with which 
Flora held the young man’s eye a second, and as she 
turned away there was accusation in the faint toss and 
flicker of the deep lace that curtained her hat. Both 
her companions saw it, but Irby she filled with an in- 
stant inebriation by one look, the kindest she had ever 
given him. 

“Both barrels!” said the old lady to herself. 

As Irby reached the carriage door Flora’s touch 
arrested him. It was as light as a leaf, but it thrilled 
him like wine — whose thrill he well knew. 

66 


Flora Taps Grandma’s Cheek 

‘‘I’ve lost one of my gloves,” she said. 

He looked about her feet. 

“You mus’ have drop’ it on the stair,” said grand- 
mamma, discerning the stratagem, and glad to aid it. 

Problem in tactics: To hunt the glove all the way up 
to the balcony and return before Hilary, if he was com- 
ing, could reach Flora’s side. Irby set his teeth — he 
loathed problems — and sprang up the steps. 

“No use,” chanted Madame with enjoyment; “the 
other one is not coming.” 

But Flora remained benign while the old lady drew a 
little mocking sigh. “Ah,” said the latter, “if the 
General would only stop changing his mind about his 
two nephews, what a lot of hard work that would save 
you!” 

“It isn’t hard!” cried Flora; so radiantly that pass- 
ing strangers brightened back, “I love it!” 

“It!” mocked the grandmother as the girl passed 
her into the carriage. “It!” 

“You poor tired old thing!” sighed the compassion- 
ate beauty. “ Never mind, dear; how the General may 
choose no longer gives me any anxiety.” 

“Oh, you lie!” 

“No,” softly laughed the girl, “not exactly. Don’t 
collapse, love, you’ll get your share of the loot yet. My 
choice shall fit the General’s as this glove (drawing on 
the one Irby was still away in search of) fits this 
hand.” 

Madame smiled her contempt: “Nevertheless you 
will risk all just to show Anna ” 

Flora made a gesture of delight but harkened on 

“That she cannot have her Captain till ” 

67 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“Till I’m sure I don’t want him!” sang the girl. 

“Which will never be!” came the quiet response. 

The maiden flushed: “On the contrary, my dear, I 
was just going to say, you will please begin at once to 
be more civil to our Captain — Irby.” 

Madame gazed: “My God!” 

“Ho!” said Flora, “I’d rather somebody else’s.” 
She cheerily smoothed the bonnet-bows under the old 
lady’s chin: Now, chere , you know the assets are all 
you care for — even if with them you have to take a 
nincompoop for a grandson.” 

She was laughing merrily when Irby reappeared in 
the crowd, motioning that he had found nothing. Her 
gloved hands raised in fond apology, and Hilary’s ab- 
sence, appeased him, and he entered the vehicle. 

So to Jackson Square, where it was good-by to Irby 
and the carriage, and Age and Beauty climbed their 
staircase together. “To-morrow’s Saturday,” gayly 
sighed the girl. “ I’ve a good mind to lie abed till noon, 
counting up the week’s successes.” 

“Especially to-day’s,” smirked weary Age. 

“Ho-o-oh!” laughed the maiden, “you and to-day 
be .” The rest was whispered close, with a one- 

fingered tap on the painted cheek. In the gloom of the 
upper landing she paused to murmur, “hear this: Two 
things I have achieved this week worth all to-day’s bad 
luck ten times over — you don’t believe me?” 

“No, you pretty creature; you would have told me 
sooner, if only for vanity.” 

“I swear to you it is true!” whispered the lithe 
boaster, with a gleeful quiver from head to foot. “Lis- 
ten! First — purely, of course, for love of Anna — I 
68 


Flora Taps Grandma’s Cheek 

have conspired with the General to marry her to Kin- 
caid. And, second, also purely for loye of her, I have 
conspired with Irby to keep her and Kincaid forever 
and a day apart!” 

She tapped both the aged cheeks at once: “I hate to 
share anything so delicious with you, but I must, be- 
cause ” 

“Ah-h! because, as usual ” 

“Yes! yes, you sweet old pelican! because you are 
to turn the crank! But it’s all for love of Anna. Ah, 
there’s no inspiration like exasperation!” 

“Except destitution!” said the grandmother. 

They came before Charlie with arms about each 
other and openly enjoyed his only comment — a scornful 
rounding of his eyes. 

In the Callender house, as the stair clock sounded 
the smallest hour of the night, Miranda, seeing the 
chink under Anna’s door to be still luminous, stole to 
the spot, gently rapped, and winning no response 
warily let herself in. 

From the diary on her desk Anna lifted her cheek, 
looked up, reclosed her lids, smiled and reopened them. 
Miranda took the blushing face between her palms, 
and with quizzing eyes — and nose — inquired: 

“Is there any reason under heaven why Anna Cal- 
lender shouldn’t go to bed and have glad dreams?” 

“None that I know of,” said Anna. 


69 


XV 


THE LONG MONTH OF MARCH 

Ole mahs’ love’ wine, ole mis’ love’ silk, 

De piggies, dey loves buttehmilk, 

An’ eveh sence dis worl’ began, 

De ladies loves de ladies’ man. 

I loves to sing a song to de ladies! 

I loves to dance along o’ de ladies! 

Whilse eveh I can breave aw see aw stan’ 

I’s bound to be a ladies’ man. 

So sang Captain Hilary Kincaid at the Mandeville- 
Callender wedding feast, where his uncle Brodnax, 
with nearly every one we know, was present. Hilary 
had just been second groomsman, with Flora for his 
“file leader,” as he said, meaning second bridesmaid. 
He sat next her at table, with Anna farthest away. 

Hardly fortunate was some one who, conversing 
with the new Miss Callender, said the charm of Kin- 
caid’s singing was that the song came from “the entire 
man.” She replied that just now it really seemed so! 
In a sense both comments were true, and yet never in 
the singer’s life had so much of “the entire man” re- 
fused to sing. All that night of the illumination he had 
not closed his eyes, except in anguish for having tried 
to make love on the same day when — and to the same 
Anna Callender before whom — he had drawn upon 
himself the roaring laugh of the crowded street; or in 
a sort of remorse for letting himself become the rival 
of a banished friend who, though warned that a whole 
platoon of him would make no difference, suddenly 
70 


The Long Month of March 

seemed to plead a prohibitory difference to one’s in- 
most sense of honor. 

At dawn he had risen resolved to make good his boast 
and “ fight like a whale.” Under orders of his own 
seeking he had left the battery the moment its tents 
were up and had taken boat for Mobile. Whence he 
had returned only just in time to stand beside Flora 
Valcour, preceded by a relative of the bridegroom 
paired with Anna. 

Yet here at the feast none was merrier than Kincaid, 
who, charmingly egged on by Flora, kept those about 
him in gales of mirth, and even let himself be “cajoled” 
(to use his own term) into singing this song whose 
title had become his nickname. Through it all Anna 
smiled and laughed with the rest and clapped for each 
begged-for stanza. Yet all the time she said in her heart, 
“He is singing it at me!” 

De squir’l he love’ de hick’ry tree, 

De clover love’ de bummle-bee, 

De flies, dey loves mullasses, an’ — 

De ladies loves de ladies’ man. 

I loves to be de beau o’ de ladies! 

I loves to shake a toe wid de ladies! 

Whilse eveh I’m alive, on wateh aw Ian’, 

I’s bound to be a ladies’ man. 

The General, seeing no reason why Hilary should 
not pay Anna at least the attentions he very properly 
paid his “file leader,” endured the song with a smile, 
but took revenge when he toasted the bride: 

“In your prayers to-night, my dear Constance, just 
thank God your husband is, at any rate, without the 
sense of humor — Stop, my friends! Let me finish!” 

' 7 1 


Kincaid’s Battery 

A storm of laughter was falling upon Mandeville, but 
the stubborn General succeeded after all in diverting 
it to Hilary, to whom in solemn mirth he pointed as — 
“that flirtatious devotee of giddiness, without a fault 
big enough to make him interesting !” [“Hoh!” — 

“Hoh!” — from men and maidens who could easily 
have named huge ones.] Silent Anna knew at least 
two or three; was it not a fault a hundred times too 
grave to be uninteresting, for a big artillerist to take a 
little frightened lassie as cruelly at her word as he was 
doing right here and now? 

Interesting to her it was that his levity still remained 
unsubmerged, failing him only in a final instant : Their 
hands had clasped in leave-taking and her eyes were 
lifted to his, when some plea with which “the entire 
man” seemed overcharged to the very lips was suddenly, 
subtly, and not this time by disconcertion, but by self- 
mastery, withheld. Irby put in a stiff good-by, and as 
he withdrew, Hilary echoed only the same threadbare 
word more brightly, and was gone; saying to himself 
as he looked back from the garden’s outmost bound : 

“She’s cold; that’s what’s the matter with Anna; 
cold and cruel!” 

Tedious was the month of March. Mandeville 
devise’ himself a splandid joke on that, to the effect 
that soon enough there would be months of tedieuse 
marches — ha, ha, ha! — and contribute’ it to the 
news-pape’. Yet the tedium persisted. Always some- 
thing about to occur, nothing ever occurring. Another 
vast parade, it is true, some two days after the marriage, 
to welcome from Texas that aged general (friend of 
the Callenders) who after long suspense to both sides 
72 


The Long Month of March 

had at last joined the South, and was to take command 
at New Orleans. Also, consequent upon the bursting 
of a gun that day in Kincaid’s Battery, the funeral 
procession of poor, handsome, devil-may-care Felix de 
Gruy; saxhorns moaning and wailing, drums muttering 
from their muffled heads, Anna’s ensign furled in black, 
captain and lieutenants on foot, brows inclined, sabres 
reversed, and the “ Stars and Bars,” new flag of the 
Confederacy, draping the slow caisson that bore him 
past the Callenders’ gates in majesty so strange for 
the gay boy. 

Such happenings, of course; but nothing that ever 
brought those things for which one, wakening in the 
night, lay and prayed while forced by the songster’s 
rapture to “listen to the mocking-bird.” 

While the Judge lived the Callenders had been used 
to the company of men by the weight of whose energies 
and counsel the clock of public affairs ran and kept 
time; senators, bishops, bank presidents, great lawyers, 
leading physicians; a Dr. Sevier, for one. Some of 
these still enjoyed their hospitality, and of late in the 
old house life had recovered much of its high charm 
and breadth of outlook. Yet March was tedious. 

For in March nearly all notables felt bound to be up 
at Montgomery helping to rock the Confederacy’s 
cradle. Whence came back sad stories of the incapa- 
city, negligence, and bickerings of misplaced men. It 
was “almost as bad as at Washington.” Friends still 
in the city were tremendously busy; yet real business — 
Commerce — with scarce a moan of complaint, lay 
heaving out her dying breath. Busy at everything but 
business, these friends, with others daily arriving in 

73 


Kincaid’s Battery 

command of rustic volunteers, kept society tremendously 
gay, by gaslight; and courage and fortitude and love 
of country and trust in God and scorn of the foe went 
clad in rainbow colors; but at the height of all manner 
of revels some pessimist was sure to explain to Anna 
why the war must be long, of awful cost, and with a 
just fighting chance to win. 

“Then why do we not turn about right here?” 

“Too late now.” 

Such reply gave an inward start, it seemed so fitted 
to her own irrevealable case. But it was made to many 
besides her, and women came home from dinings or 
from operas and balls for the aid of this or that new 
distress of military need, and went up into the dark 
and knelt in all their jewels and wept long. In March 
the poor, everywhere, began to be out of work, and re- 
cruiting to be lively among them too, because for thou- 
sands of them it was soldier’s pay or no bread. Among 
the troops from the country death had begun to reap 
great harvests ere a gun was fired, and in all the camps 
lovers nightly sang their lugubrious “Lorena,” feeling 
that “a hundred months had passed” before they had 
really dragged through one. March was so tedious, 
and lovers are such poor arithmeticians. Wherever 
Hilary Kincaid went, showing these how to cast can- 
non (that would not burst), those where to build forti- 
fications, and some how to make unsickly camps, that 
song was begged of him in the last hour before sleep; 
last song but one, the very last being always — that least 
liked by Anna. 

Tedious to Kincaid’s Battery were his absences on 
so many errands. Behind a big earthwork of their 

74 


The Long Month of March 

own construction down on the river’s edge of the old 
battle ground, close beyond the Callenders’, they lay 
camped in pretty white tents that seemed to Anna, at 
her window, no bigger than visiting-cards. Rarely did 
she look that way but the fellows were drilling, their 
brass pieces and their officers’ drawn sabres glinting 
back the sun, horses and men as furiously diligent as 
big and little ants, and sometimes, of an afternoon, 
their red and yellow silk and satin standard unfurled — 
theirs and hers. Of evenings small bunches of the boys 
would call to chat and be sung to; to threaten to desert 
if not soon sent to the front; and to blame all delays 
on colonels and brigadiers “known” by them to be 
officially jealous of — They gave only the tedious nick- 
name. 

“Why belittle him with that?” queried Miranda, 
winning Anna’s silent gratitude. 

“It doesn’t belittle him ” cried Charlie. “That’s the 
joke. It makes him loom larger!” 

Others had other explanations: Their guns were 
“ladies’ guns!” Were the guns the foremost cause? 
Some qualified: “Foremost, yes; fundamental, no. 
Rather the fact that never was a woman cited in male 
gossip but instantly he was her champion; or fhat no 
woman ever brought a grievance to any camp where he 
might be but she wanted to appeal it to him. 

Anna “thought the name was all from the song.” 

“Oh, fully as much from his hundred and one other 
songs! Had he never sung to her — 

“I’d offer thee this hand of mine ” ? 

Frankly, it was agreed, he did most laughably love 

75 


Kincaid’s Battery 

ladies’ company; that he could always find it, as a 
horse can find water; that although no evening in their 
society could be so gay or so long that he would not be 
certain to work harder next day than any one else, no 
day could be so cruelly toilsome that he could not spend 
half the next night dancing with the girls; and lastly, 
that with perfect evenness and a boyish modesty he 
treated them all alike. 

Anna laughed with the rest, but remembered three 
separate balls to which, though counted on, he had not 
come, she uninformed that military exigencies had at 
the last moment curtly waved him off, and he unaware 
that these exigencies had been created by Irby under 
inspiration from the daintiest and least self-assertive 
tactician in or about New Orleans. 


XVI 

CONSTANCE TRIES TO HELP 

One day, in Canal Street, Kincaid met “ Smellemout 
and Ketchem.” It was pleasant to talk with men of 
such tranquil speech. He proposed a glass of wine, 
but just then they were “ strictly temperance.” They 
alluded familiarly to his and Greenleaf’s midnight ad- 
venture. The two bull-drivers, they said, were still 
unapprehended. 

Dropping to trifles they mentioned a knife, a rather 
glittering gewgaw, which, as evidence, ought 

“Oh, that one!” said Hilary. “Yes, I have it, mud, 
glass jewels and all. No,” he laughed, “I can keep it 
quite as safely as you can.” 

76 


Constance Tries to Help 

So they passed to a larger matter. “ For, really, as to 
Gibbs and Lafontaine ” 

“You can’t have them either,” interrupted their 
Captain, setting the words to a tune. Then only less 
melodiously — “No, sir-ee! Why, gentlemen, they 
weren’t trying to kill the poor devil, he was trying to 
kill them, tell your Committee of Public Safety. And 
tell them times are changed. You can take Sam and 
Maxime, of course, if you can take the whole battery; 
we’re not doing a retail business. By the by — did you 
know? — ’twas Sam’s gun broke the city’s record, last 
week, for rapid firing! Funny, isn’t it! — Excuse me, I 
must speak to those ladies.” 

The ladies, never prettier, were Mrs. Callender and 
Constance. They were just reentering, from a shop, 
their open carriage. In amiable reproach they called 
him a stranger, yet with bewitching resignation accepted 
and helped out his lame explanations. 

“You look — ” began Constance — but “careworn” 
was a risky term and she stopped. He suggested 
“weather-beaten,” and the ladies laughed. 

“Yes,” they said, “even they were overtasked with 
patriotic activities, and Anna had almost made herself 
ill. Nevertheless if he would call he should see her too. 
Oh, no, not to-day; no, not to-morrow; but — well — 
the day after.” (Miss Valcour passed so close as to 
hear the appointment, but her greeting smile failed to 
draw their attention.) “And oh, then you must tell us 
all about that fearful adventure in which you saved 
Lieutenant Greenleaf’s life! Ah, we’ve heard, just 
heard, in a letter .” The horses danced with impa- 
tience. “We shall expect you!” 

77 


Kincaid’s Battery 

As they drove into Royal Street with Constance rap- 
turously pressing Miranda’s hand the latter tried vainly 
to exchange bows with a third beauty and a second 
captain, but these were busy meeting each other in 
bright surprise and espied the carriage only when it 
had passed. 

Might the two not walk together a step or so ? With 
pleasure. They were Flora and Irby. Presently — 

“Do you know,” she asked, “where your cousin 
proposes to be day after to-morrow evening — in case 
you should want to communicate with him?” 

He did not. She told him. 

XVII 

“OH, CONNIE, DEAR NOTHING GO ON” 

The third evening came. On all the borders of 
dear Dixie more tents than ever whitened sea-shores and 
mountain valleys, more sentinels paced to and fro in 
starlight or rain, more fifers and trumpeters woke the 
echoes with strains to enliven fortitude, more great 
guns frowned silently at each other over more parapets, 
and more thousands of lovers reclined about camp 
fires with their hearts and fancies at home, where 
mothers and maidens prayed in every waking moment 
for God’s mercy to keep the brave truants; and with 
remembrance of these things Anna strove to belittle her 
own distress while about the library lamp she and 
Miranda seemed each to be reading a book, and Con- 
stance the newspaper sent from Charleston by Mande- 
ville. 


“Oh, Connie, Dear— Nothing— Go On” 


Out in the mellow night a bird sang from the tip-top 
of a late-blooming orange tree, and inside, away inside, 
inside and through and through the poor girl’s heart, 
the “years” — which really were nothing but the mantel 
clock’s quarter-hours — “crept slowly by.” 

At length she laid her book aside, softly kissed each 
seated companion, and ascended to her room and 
window. There she stood long without sound or mo- 
tion, her eyes beyond the stars, her head pressed wearily 
against the window frame. Then the lids closed while 
her lips formed soft words: 

“ Oh, God, he is not coming!” Stillness again. And 
then — “Oh, let me believe yet that only Thy hand 
keeps him away ! Is it to save him for some one fairer 
and better? God, I ask but to know! I’m a rebel, 
but not against Thee, dear Lord. I know it’s a sin for 
me to suffer this way; Thou dost not owe me happiness; 
I owe it Thee. Oh, God, am I clamoring for my 
week’s wages before I’ve earned an hour’s pay? Yet 
oh! yet oh!” — the head rocked heavily on its support — 
“if only — if only ” 

She started — listened! A gate opened — shut. She 
sprang to her glass and then from it. In soft haste she 
needlessly closed the window and drew its shade and 
curtains. She bathed her eyelids and delicately dried 
them. At the mirror again she laid deft touches on 
brow and crown, harkening between for any mes- 
senger’s step, and presently, without reason, began to 
set the room more exquisitely to rights. Now she faced 
the door and stood attentive, and now she took up a 
small volume and sat down by her lamp. 

A tap : Constance entered, beaming only too tenderly. 

79 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“It was better, wasn’t it,” she asked, hovering, “to 
come than to send?” 

“Why, of course, dear; it always is.” 

A meditative silence followed. Then Anna languidly 
inquired, “Who is it?” 

“Nobody but Charlie.” 

The inquirer brightened: “And why isn’t Charlie 
as good as any one?” 

“He is, to-night,” replied the elder beauty, “except 
— the one exception.” 

“Oh, Connie” — a slight flush came as the seated girl 
smilingly drew her sister’s hands down to her bosom — 
“there isn’t any one exception, and there’s not going to 
be any. Now, that smile is downright mean of you!” 

The offender atoned with a kiss on the brow. 

“Why do you say,” asked its recipient, “‘as good as 
any one, to-night ’?” 

“Because,” was the soft reply, “to-night he comes 
from — the other — to explain why the other couldn’t 
come.” 

“Why!” — the flush came back stronger — “why, Con- 
nie! why, that’s positively silly — ha, ha, ha!” 

“I don’t see how, Nan.” 

“My dear Con! Isn’t his absence equally and per- 
fectly innocent whether he couldn’t come or wouldn’t 
come? But an explanation sent! — by courier! — to — 
to shorten — ah, ha, ha! — to shorten our agony! Why, 
Con, wouldn’t you have thought better of him than 
that? H-oh, me! What a man’s ‘bound to be’ I 
suppose he’s bound to be. What is the precious ex- 
planation ? ” 

With melting eyes Constance shook her head. ‘You 
80 


“Oh, Connie, Dear— Nothing— Go On” 


don’t deserve to hear it,” she replied. Her tears came : 
“My little sister, I’m on the man’s side in this affair!” 
“That’s not good of you,” murmured Anna. 

“I don’t claim to be good. But there’s one thing, 
Nan Callender, I never did; I never chained up my 

lover to see if he’d stay chained. When Steve ” 

“Oh-h! Oh-h!” panted Anna, “you’re too cruel! 
Hilary Kincaid wears no chain of mine!” 

“Oh, yes, he does! He’s broken away, but he’s 
broken away, chain and all, to starve and perish, as 
one look into his face would show you!” 

“He doesn’t show his face. He sends ” 

“An explanation. Yes. Which first you scorn and 
then consent to hear.” 

“Don’t scorn me , Connie. What’s the explanation ? ” 
“It’s this: he’s been sent back to those Mobile 
fortifications — received the order barely in time to catch 
the boat by going instantly. Nan, the Valcours’ house 
is found to stand right on their proposed line, and he’s 
gone to decide whether the line may be changed or the 
house must be demolished.” 

Anna rose, twined an arm in her sister’s and with 
her paced the chamber. “How perfectly terrible!” she 
murmured, their steps ceasing and her eyes remote in 
meditation. “Poor Flora! Oh, the poor old lady! 
And oh, oh, poor Flora! — But, Con! The line will 
be changed! He — you know what the boys call him 1 ” 
“Yes, but there’s the trouble. He’s no one lady’s 

man. Like Steve, he’s so absolutely fair ” 

“ Connie, I tell you it’s a strange line he won’t change 
for Flora Valcour!” 

“Now, Nan Callender! The line will go where it 
81 


Kincaid’s Battery 

ought to go. By the by, Charlie says neither Flora 
nor her grandmother knows the house is in danger. 
Of course, if it is harmed, the harm will be paid for.” 

“Oh, paid for!” 

“Why, Nan, I’m as sorry for them as you. But I 
don’t forget to be sorry for Hilary Kincaid too.” 

“Connie” — walk resumed, speaker’s eyes on the 
floor — “if you’d only see that to me he’s merely very 
interesting — entertaining — nothing more whatever — I’d 
like to say just a word about him.” 

“Say on, precious.” 

“Well — did you ever see a man so fond of men?” 

“Oh, of course he is, or men wouldn’t be so fond of 
him.” 

“7 think he’s fonder of men than of women!” 

Constance smiled : “Do you ? ” 

“And I think,” persisted Anna, “the reason some 
women find him so agreeable is that our collective 
society is all he asks of us, or ever will ask.” 

“Nan Callender, look me in the eye! You can’t! 
My little sister, you’ve got a lot more sense than I have, 
and you know it, but I can tell you one thing. When 
Steve and I ” 

“Oh, Connie, dear — nothing — go on.” 

“I won’t! Except to say some lovers take love easy 
and some — can’t. I must go back to Charlie. I 
know, Nan, it’s those who love hardest that take love 
hardest, and I suppose it’s born in Hilary Kincaid, 
and it’s born in you, to fight it as you’d fight fire. But, 
oh, in these strange times, don’t do it! Don’t do it. 
You’re going to have trouble a-plenty without.” 

The pair, moving to the door with hands on each 
82 


Flora Tells the Truth ! 

other’s shoulders, exchanged a melting gaze. “ Troubi. 

a-plenty,” softly asked Anna, “why do you ?” 

“Oh, why, why, why!” cried the other, with a sud- 
den gleam of tears. “I wish you and Miranda had 
never learned that word.” 


XVIII 

FLORA TELLS THE TRUTH! 

You ask how the Valcour ladies, living outwardly so 
like the most of us who are neither scamps nor saints, 
could live by moral standards so different from those 
we have always thought essential to serenity of brow, 
sweetness of bloom or blitheness of companionship, and 
yet could live so prettily — remain so winsome and un- 
scarred. 

Well, neither of them had ever morally fallen enough 
even to fret the brow. It is the fall that disfigures. 
They had lived up to inherited principles (such as they 
were), and one of the minor of these was, to adapt 
their contours to whatever they impinged upon. 

We covet solidity of character, but Flora and Ma- 
dame were essentially fluid. They never let them- 
selves clash with any one, and their private rufflings of 
each other had only a happy effect of aerating their 
depths, and left them as mirror-smooth and thoroughly 
one as the bosom of a garden lake after the ripples 
have died behind two jostling swans. To the Callen- 
ders society was a delightful and sufficient end. To 
the Valcours it was a means to all kinds of ends, as 
truly as commerce or the industries, and yet they were 

83 


Kincaid’s Battery 

so fragrantly likable that to call them accomplices 
seems outrageous — clogs the pen. Yes, they were 
actors, but you never saw that. They never stepped 
out of their parts, and they had this virtue, if it is one : 
that behind all their roles they were staunchly for each 
other in every pinch. When Kincaid had been away a 
few days this second time, these two called at the Cal- 
lender house. 

To none was this house more interesting than to 
Flora. In her adroit mind she accused it of harboring 
ancient secrets in its architecture, shrewd hiding-places 
in its walls. Now as she stood in the panelled drawing- 
rooms awaiting its inmates, she pointed out to her 
seated companion that this was what her long-dead 
grandsire might have made their own home, behind 
Mobile, had he spent half on its walls what he had 
spent in them on wine, cards, and ” 

“Ah!” chanted the old lady, with a fierce glint and 
a mock-persuasive smile, “add the crowning word, the 
capsheaf. You have the stamina to do it.” 

“Women,” said the girl of stamina beamingly, and 
went floating about, peering and tapping for hollow 
places. At one tap her eye, all to itself, danced; but 
on the instant Anna, uninformed of their presence, and 
entering with a vase of fresh roses, stood elated. Praise 
of the flowers hid all confusion, and Flora, with laughing 
caresses and a droll hardihood which Anna always en- 
joyed, declared she would gladly steal roses, garden, house 
and all. Anna withdrew, promising instant return. 

“Flora dear!” queried the grandmother in French, 
“why did you tell her the truth? For once you must 
have been disconcerted!” 


84 


Flora Tells the Truth! 

The sparkling girl laughed: “Why, isn’t that — with 
due modifications — just what we’re here for?” 

Madame suddenly looked older, but quickly bright- 
ened again as Flora spoke on: “Don’t you believe the 
truth is, now and then, the most effective lie? I’ve 
sometimes inferred you did.” 

The old lady rather enjoyed the gibe: “My dear, I 
can trust you never to give any one an overdose of it. 
Yet take care, you gave it a bit too pure just now. 
Don’t ever risk it so on that fool Constance, she has 
the intuitive insight of a small child — the kind you lost 
so early.” 

The two exchanged a brief admiring glance. “Oh, 
I’m all right with Constance,” was the reply. “I’m 
cousin to ‘Steve’!” 

There the girl’s gayety waned. The pair were at 
this moment in desperate need of money. Mandeville 
was one of the old coffee-planter’s descendants. Had 
fate been less vile, thought Flora, this house might have 
been his ; and so hers in the happy event of his demise. 
But now, in such case, to Constance, as his widow, 
would be left even the leavings, the overseer’s cottage; 
which was one more convenient reason for detesting — 
not him, nor Constance — that would be to waste good 
ammunition; but 

“Still thinking of dear Anna?” asked the dame. 

The maiden nodded: “Grandma” — a meditative 
pause — “I love Anna. Anna’s the only being on earth 
I can perfectly trust.” 

“Ahem!” was the soft rejoinder, and the two smi- 
lingly held each other’s gaze for the larger part of a 
minute. Then one by one came in the ladies of 

85 


Kincaid’s Battery 

the house, and it was kiss and chirrup and kiss 
again. 

“Cousin Constance — ah, ha, ha ! — cousin Flora!” 

The five talked of the wedding. Just to think ! ’Twas 
barely a month ago, they said. 

Yet how much had occurred, pursued Miranda, and 
how many things hoped and longed for had not oc- 
curred, and how time had dragged! At those words 
Flora saw Anna’s glance steal over to Miranda. But 
Miranda did not observe, and the five chatted on. 
How terrifying, at still noon of the last Sabbath — 
everybody in church — had been that explosion of the 
powder-mill across the river. The whole business 
blown to dust. Nothing but the bare ground left. 
Happily no workmen there. No, not even a watchman, 
though the city was well known to be full of the enemy’s 
“ minions” (Flora’s term). Amazing negligence, all 
agreed. Yet only of a piece — said Constance — etc. 

And how sad to find there was a victim, after all, 
when poor, threadbare old Doctor Visionary, inventor 
of the machine-gun and a new kind of powder, began 
to be missed by his landlady, there being, in Captain 
Kincaid’s absence, no one else to miss him. Yes, it 
was the Captain who had got him a corner to work in 
at the powder-mill. So much the worse for both. 
Now plans, models, formulae, and inventor were gone in 
that one flash and roar that shook the whole city and 
stopped all talk of Captain Kincaid’s promotion as an 
earthquake stops a clock. 

“Well,” cried Constance to Flora, who had grown 
silent, “the battery will love him all the more!” 

“And so will we all!” said Madame, also to Flora; 

86 


Flora Romances 

and Flora, throwing off a look of pain, explained to 
Anna, “He is so good to my brother!” 

“Naturally,” quizzed Miranda, with her merriest 
wrinkles. Flora sparkled, made a pretty face at her 
and forced a change of theme; gave Anna’s roses new 
praise, and said she had been telling grandma of the 
swarms of them in the rear garden. So the old lady, 
whom she had told no such thing, let Constance and 
Miranda conduct her there. But Flora softly detained 
Anna, and the moment they were alone seized both her 
hands. Whereat through all Anna’s frame ran despair, 
crying, “He has asked her! He has asked her!” 

XIX 

FLORA ROMANCES 

“Dearest,” warily exclaimed the Creole beauty, 
with a sudden excess of her pretty accent, “I am in 
a situation perfectly dreadful!” 

Anna drew her to a sofa, seeing pictures of her and 
Hilary together, and tortured with a belief in their ex- 
quisite fitness to be so. “Can I help you, dear?” she 
asked, though the question echoed mockingly within 
her. 

“Ah, no, except with advice,” said Flora, “only with 
advice!” 

“Ho-o-oh! if I were worthy to advise you it wouldn’t 
flatter me so to be asked.” 

“But I muz’ ask. ’Tis only with you that I know 
my secret will be — to everybody — and forever — at the 
bed of the ocean. You can anyhow promise me that.” 

87 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“Yes, I can anyhow promise you that.” 

“Then,” said Flora, “let me speak whiles — ” She 
dropped her face into her hands, lifted it again and 
stared into her listener’s eyes so piteously that through 
Anna ran another cry — “He has not asked! No girl 
alive could look so if he had asked her!” 

Flora seemed to nerve herself: “Anna, every dollar 
we had, every picayune we could raise, grandma and I, 
even on our Mobile house and our few best jewels, is — 


“Oh, what — what? Not lost? Not — not stolen?” 

“Blown up! Blown up with that poor old man in 
the powder-mill!” 

“Flora, Flora!” was all Anna, in the shame of her 
rebuked conjectures, could cry, and all she might have 
cried had she known the very truth : That every dollar, 
picayune, and other resource had disappeared gradually 
in the grist-mill of daily need and indulgence, and never 
one of them been near the powder-mill, the poor old 
man or any of his devices. 

“His theories were so convincing,” sighed Flora. 

“And you felt so pitiful for him,” prompted Anna. 

“Grandma did; and I was so ambitious to do some 
great patriotic service — like yours, you Callenders, in 
giving those cannon’! — and ” 

“Oh, but you went too far!” 

“Ah, if we had only gone no farther!” 

“You went farther? How could you?” 

“Grandma did. You know, dear, how suddenly 
Captain Kincaid had to leave for Mobile — by night?” 

“Yes,” murmured Anna, with great emphasis in her 
private mind. 


88 


Flora Romances 

“Well, jus’ at the las’ he gave Charlie a small bag of 
gold, hundreds of dollars, for — for — me to keep jor him 
till his return. Anna! I was offended.” 

“Oh, but surely he meant no ” 

“Ah, my dear, did I ever give him the very least 
right to pick me out in that manner ? No. Except in 
that one pretty way he has with all of us — and which 
you know so well ” 

An uncourageous faint smile seemed the safest re- 
sponse. 

“Yes,” said Flora, “you know it. And I had never 
allowed myself ” 

With eyes down the two girls sat silent. Then the 
further word came absently, “I refused to touch his 
money,” and there was another stillness. 

“Dear,” slowly said Anna, “I don’t believe it was 
his. It would not have been in gold. Some men of the 
battery were here last evening — You know the Aboli- 
tion school-mistress who was sent North that day?” 

“Yes, I know, ’twas hers.” 

“Well, dear, if she could entrust it to him ” 

“Ah! she had a sort of right, being, as the whole 
battery knows, in love with him” — the beauty swept a 
finger across her perfect brows — “up to there! For 
that I don’t know is he to blame. If a girl has no more 
sense ” 

“No,” murmured Anna as the cruel shaft went 
through her. “ What did Charlie do with the money ? ” 

Flora tossed a despairing hand: “Gave it to grand- 
ma! And poor innocent grandma lent it to the old 
gentleman ! ’Twas to do wonders for the powder and 

gun, and be return’ in three days. But the next ” 

89 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“I see,” sighed Anna, “I see!” 

“Yes, next day ’twas Sunday, and whiles I was 
kneeling in the church the powder, the gun, the old man 
and the money — Oh, Anna, what shall I do?” 

“My dear, I will tell you,” began Anna, but the 
seeker of advice was not quite ready for it. 

“We have a few paltry things, of course,” she spoke 
on, “but barely would they pay half. They would 
neither save our honor, neither leave us anything for 
rent or bread! Our house, to be sure, is worth more 
than we have borrowed on it, but in the meantime ” 

“In the meantime, dear, you shall — ” But still 
Flora persisted: 

“Any day, any hour, Captain Kincaid may return. 
Oh, if ’twere anybody in this worl’ but him! For, 
Anna, I must take all the blame — all!” The face went 
again into the hands. 

“ My dear, you shall take none. You shall hand him 
every dollar, every picayune, on sight.” 

“Ah, how is that possible? Oh, no, no, no. Use 
your money? Never, never, never!” 

“ It isn’t money, Flora. And no one shall ever know. 
I’ve got some old family jewellery ” 

“Family — Oh, sweet, for shame!” 

“No shame whatever. There’s a great lot of it — 
kinds that will never be worn again. Let me — ” The 
speaker rose. 

“No, no, no! No, Anna, no! For Heaven’s 
sake ” 

“Just a piece or two,” insisted Anna. “Barely 
enough to borrow the amount.” She backed away, 
Flora clinging to her fingers and faltering: 

90 


Flora Romances 

“No, blessed angel, you must notl No, I will not 
wait. I'll — I’ll ” 

But Anna kissed the clinging hands and vanished. 

A high elation bore her quite to her room and re- 
mained with her until she had unlocked the mass of old 
jewels and knelt before them. But then all at once it 
left her. She laid her folded hands upon them, bent 
her brow to the hands, then lifted brow and weeping 
eyes and whispered to Heaven for mercy. 

“Oh” — a name she could not speak even there went 
through her heart in two big throbs — “if only we had 
never met! I never set so much as a smile to snare 
you, you who have snared me. Can Connie be right ? 
Have you felt my thraldom, and are you trying to throw 
me off ? Then I must help you do it. Though I covet 
your love more than life I will not tether it. Oh, it’s 
because I so covet that I will not tether it! With the 
last gem from my own throat will I rather help you go 
free if you want to go. God of mercy, what else can I 
do!” 

In grave exultancy Flora moved up and down the 
drawing-room enjoying her tread on its rich carpet. 
She would have liked to flit back to the side of yonder 
great chimney breast, the spot where she had been 
surprised while sounding the panel work, but this was 
no time for postponable risks. She halted to regale 
her critical eye on the goodly needlework of a folding- 
screen whose joints, she noticed, could not be peered 
through, and in a pretty, bird-like way stole a glance 
behind it. Nothing there. She stepped to a front 
window and stood toying with the perfect round of her 
silken belt. How slimly neat it was. Yet beneath the 

9 1 


Kincaid’s Battery 

draperies it so trimly confined lay hid, in a few notes of 
“city money,” the proceeds of the gold she had just 
reported blown into thin air with the old inventor — 
who had never seen a glimmer of it. Not quite the full 
amount was there; it had been sadly nibbled. But 
now by dear Anna’s goodness (ahem!) the shortage 
could be restored, the entire hundreds handed back to 
Captain Kincaid, and a snug sum be retained “for 
rent and bread.” Yet after all — as long as good stories 
came easy — why hand anything back — to anybody — 
even to — him? 

He! In her heart desire and odium beat strangely 
together. Fine as martial music he was, yet gallingly 
out of her rhythm, above her key. Liked her much, 
too. Yes, for charms she had; any fool could be liked 
that way. What she craved was to be liked for charms 
she had not, graces she scorned; and because she could 
not be sure how much of that sort she was winning she 
tingled with heat against him — and against Anna — 
Anna giver of guns — who had the money to give guns — 
till her bosom rose and fell. But suddenly her musing 
ceased, her eyes shone. 

A mounted officer galloped into the driveway, a 
private soldier followed, and the private was her brother. 
Now they came close. The leader dismounted, passed 
his rein to Charlie and sprang up the veranda steps. 
Flora shrank softly from the window and at the same 
moment Anna reentered gayly, showing a glitter of 
values twice all expectation: 

“If these are not enough — ” She halted with lips 
apart. Flora had made sign toward the front door, 
and now with a moan of fond protest covered the 
92 


Flora Romances 

gem-laden hand in both her palms and pushed it from 
her. 

“Take them back,” she whispered, yet held it fast, 
“’tis too late! There — the door-bell! ’Tis Hilary 
Kincaid! All is too late, take them back!” 

“Take them, you!” as vehemently whispered Anna. 
“You must take them! You must, you shall!” 

Flora had half started to fly, but while she hung upon 
Anna’s words she let her palms slip under the bestow- 
ing hand and the treasure slide into her own fingers. 

“Too late, too late! And oh, I can never, never use 
them any’ow!” She sprang noiselessly aside. To a 
maid who came down the hall Anna quietly motioned 
to show the newcomer into an opposite room, but Flora 
saw that the sign was misinterpreted: “She didn’t 
understan’ ! Anna, she’s going to bring him!” Before 
the words were done the speaker’s lithe form was gliding 
down the room toward the door by which the other ladies 
had gone out, but as she reached it she turned with a 
hand-toss as of some despairing afterthought and 
flitted back. 

Out in the hall the front door opened and closed and 
a sabre clinked: “Is Miss Callender at home?” 

Before the question was half put its unsuspected 
hearers had recovered a faultless poise. Beside a 
table that bore her roses she whom the inquirer sought 
stood retouching them and reflecting a faint excess of 
their tint, while Flora, in a grave joy of the theatrical, 
equal to her companion’s distress of it, floated from 
view behind the silken screen. 


93 


Kincaid’s Battery 


xx 

THE FIGHT FOR THE STANDARD 

His red kepi in hand and with all the stalwart brisk- 
ness of the flag-presentation’s day and hour Hilary 
Kincaid stepped into the room and halted, as large- 
eyed as on that earlier occasion, and even more startled, 
before the small figure of Anna. 

Yet not the very same Hilary Kincaid. So said her 
heart the instant glance met glance. The tarnish of 
hard use was on all his trappings; like sea-marshes on 
fire he was reddened and browned; about him hung 
palpably the sunshine and air of sands and waves, and 
all the stress and swing of wide designs; and on brow 
and cheek were new lines that looked old. From every 
point of his aspect the truth rushed home to her live- 
lier, deadlier than ever hitherto, that there was War, 
and that he and she were already parts of it. 

But the change was more than this. A second and 
quieter look, the hand-grasp lingering, showed some- 
thing deeper; something that wove and tangled itself 
through and about all designs, toils, and vigils, and 
suddenly looking out of his eyes like a starved captive, 
cried, “you — you — ” and prophesied that, whether 
they would or not, this war was to be his and hers to- 
gether. A responding thrill must have run from her 
fingers into his and belied the unaccountable restraint 
of her welcome, for a joy shone from him which it took 
her ignoring smile and her hand’s withdrawal to 
quench. 

“Miss Anna ” 


94 


The Fight for the Standard 

They sat down. His earlier boyishness came again 
somewhat, but only somewhat, as he dropped his 
elbows to his knees, looking now into his cap and now 
into her face. A glance behind her had assured Anna 
that there was no shadow on the screen, behind which 
sat Flora on the carpet, at graceful ease listening while 
she eagerly appraised the jewels in her hands and lap. 

“Miss Anna,” said the soldier again, “I’ve come — 
I’ve come to tell you something. It’s mighty hard to 
tell. It’s harder than I thought it would be. For, 
honestly, Miss Anna, you — from the first time I ever 
saw you, you — you — Were you going to speak?” 

Behind the screen Flora smiled malignly while Anna 
said, “No, I — I was only — no, not at all; go on.” 

“Yes, Miss Anna, from the first time I ” 

“When did you get back from Mobile?” asked Anna 
seeing he must be headed off. 

“From Mobile? Just now, almost. You don’t 
sup ” 

“Oh! I hope” — she must head him off again — “I 
hope you bring good news?” There was risk in the 
question, but where was there safety? At her back 
the concealed listener waited keenly for the reply. 

“Yes,” said Hilary, “news the very best and hardly 
an hour old. Didn’t you hear the battery cheering? 
That’s what I’ve come to tell you. Though it’s hard 
to tell, for I ” 

“It’s from Mobile, you say?” 

“No, I can tell you the Mobile news first, but it’s 
bad. Miss Flora’s home ” 

Anna gave a start and with a hand half upthrown said 
quietly, “Don’t tell me. No, please, don’t, I don’t 

95 


Kincaid’s Battery 

want to hear it. I can’t explain, but I — I — ” Tears 
wet her lashes, and her hands strove with each other. 
“I don’t like bad news. You should have taken it 
straight to Flora. Oh, I wish you’d do that now, won’t 
you — please?” 

Behind the screen the hidden one stiffened where 
she crouched with fierce brow and fixed eyes. 

Kincaid spoke: “Would you have me pass you by 
with my good news to go first to her with the bad?” 

“Oh, Captain Kincaid, yes, yes! Do it yet. Go, 
do it now. And tell her the good news too!” 

“Tell her the good first and then stab her with the 
bad?” 

“Oh, tell her the bad first. Do her that honor. 
She has earned it. She’ll bear the worst like the heroine 
she is — the heroine and patriot. She’s bearing it so 
now!” 

“What! she knows already?” 

In her hiding Flora’s intent face faintly smiled a 
malevolence that would have startled even the grandam 
who still killed time out among the roses with her 
juniors. 

“Yes,” replied Anna, “she knows already.” 

“Knows! Miss Anna — that her home is in ashes?” 

Anna gave a wilder start : “ Oh, no-o-oh ! Oh, yes — 
oh, no — oh, yes, yes ! Oh, Captain Kincaid, how could 
you? Oh, monstrous, monstrous!” She made all 
possible commotion to hide any sound that might 
betray Flora, who had sprung to her feet, panting. 

“But, but, Miss Anna!” protested Hilary. “Why, 
Miss Anna ” 

“Oh, Captain Kincaid, how could you?” 

96 


The Fight for the Standard 

“Why, you don’t for a moment imagine ?” 

“ Oh, it’s done, it’s done! Go, tell her. Go at once, 
Captain Kincaid. Please go at once, won’t you ? . . . 
Please!” 

He had risen amazed. Whence such sudden horror, 
in this fair girl, of a thing known by her already before 
he came? And what was this beside? Horror in the 
voice yet love beaming from the eyes? He was torn 
with perplexity. “I’ll go, of course,” he said as if in 
a dream. “Of course I’ll go at once, but — why — if 
Miss Flora already — ?” Then suddenly he recovered 
himself iri the way Anna knew so well. “Miss Anna” 
— he gestured with his cap, his eyes kindling with a 
strange mixture of worship and drollery though his 
brow grew darker — “I’m gone now!” 

“In mercy, please go!” 

“I’m gone, Miss Anna, I’m truly gone. I always am 
when I’m with you. Fred said it would be so. You 
scare the nonsense out of me, and when that goes I go 
— the bubble bursts! Miss Anna — oh, hear me — it’s 
my last chance — I’ll vanish in a moment. The fellows 
tell me I always know just what to say to any lady or 
to anything a lady says; but, on my soul, I don’t think 
I’ve ever once known what to say to you or to anything 
you’ve ever said to me, and I don’t know now, except 
that I must and will tell you ” 

“That you did not order the torch set! Oh, say 
that!” 

“No one ordered it. It was a senseless mistake. 
Some private soldiers who knew that my lines of sur- 
vey passed through the house ” 

“Ah-h! ah-h!” 


97 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“Miss Anna, what would you have? Such is war! 
Many’s the Southern home must go down under the 
fire of — of Kincaid’s Battery, Miss Anna, before this 
war is over, else we might as well bring you back your 
flag and guns. Shall we ? We can’t now, they’re or- 
dered to the front. There! I’ve got it out! That’s 
my good news. Bad enough for mothers and sisters. 
Bad for the sister of Charlie Valcour. Good for you. 
So good and bad in one for me, and so hard to tell and 
say no more ! Don’t you know why ? ” 

“ Oh, I’ve no right to know — and you’ve no right — 
oh, indeed, you mustn’t. It would be so unfair — to 
you. I can’t tell you why, but it — it would bet” 

“And it wouldn’t be of ?” 

“Any use? No, no!” 

Torturing mystery! that with such words of doom 
she should yet blush piteously, beam passionately. 

“ Good-by, then. I go. But I go — under your flag, 
don’t I? Under your flag! captain of your guns!” 

“Ah — one word — wait! Oh, Captain Kincaid, right 
is right! Not half those guns are mine. That flag is 
not mine.” 

There was no quick reply. From her concealment 
Flora, sinking noiselessly again to the carpet, harkened 
without avail. The soldier — so newly and poignantly 
hurt that twice when he took breath he failed to speak 
— gazed on the disclaiming girl until forgery distress 
she broke the silence: “I — you — every flag of our 
cause — wherever our brave soldiers ” 

“Oh, but Kincaid’s Battery! — and that flag, Anna 
Callender! The flag you gave us! That sacred ban- 
ner starts for Virginia to-morrow — goes into the war, 
98 


The Fight for the Standard 

it and your guns, with only this poor beggar and his 
boys to win it honor and glory. Will you deny us 
— who had it from your hands — your leave to call 
it yours? Oh, no, no! To me — to me you will 
not!” 

For reply there came a light in Anna’s face that shone 
into his heart and was meant so to shine, yet her dis- 
sent was prompt: “I must. I must. Oh, Capt — 
Captain Kincaid, I love that flag too well to let it go 
misnamed. It’s the flag of all of us who made it, us 
hundred girls ” 

“Hundred — yes, yes, true. But how? This very 
morning I chanced upon your secret — through little Vic- 
torine — that every stitch in all that flag’s embroideries 
is yours.” 

“Yet, Captain Kincaid, it is the flag of all those hun- 
dred girls; and if to any one marching under it it is to 
be the flag of any one of us singly, that one can only be 
— you know!” 

Majestically in her hiding-place the one implied 
lowered and lifted her head in frigid scorn and awaited 
the commander’s answer. 

“True again,” he said, “true. Let the flag of my 
hundred boys be to all and each the flag of a hundred 
girls. Yet will it be also the flag of his heart’s one choice 
— sister, wife, or sweetheart — to every man marching, 
fighting, or dying under it — and more are going to die 
under it than are ever coming back. To me, oh, to me, 
let it be yours. My tasks have spared me no time to 
earn of you what would be dearer than life, and all one 
with duty and honor. May I touch your hand ? Oh, 
just to say good-by. But if ever I return — no, have no 

99 


Kincaid’s "Battery 

fear, I’ll not say it now. Only — only — ” he lifted the 
hand to his lips — “good-by. God’s smile be on you in 
all that is to come.” 

“Good-by,” came her answering murmur. 

“And the flag?” he exclaimed. “The flag?” By 
the clink of his sabre Flora knew he was backing away. 
“Tell me — me alone — the word to perish with me if I 
perish — that to me as if alone” — the clinking came 
nearer again — “to me and for me and with your bless- 
ing” — again the sound drew away — “the flag — the 
flag I must court death under — is yours.” 

Silence. From out in the hall the lover sent back a 
last beseeching look, but no sound reached the hiding 
of the tense listener whose own heart’s beating threat- 
ened to reveal her; no sound to say that now Anna 
had distressfully shaken her head, or that now her 
tears ran down, or that now in a mingled pain and 
rapture of confession she nodded — nodded ! and yet im- 
ploringly waved him away. 

It was easy to hear the door open and close. Faintly 
on this other hand the voices of the ladies returning 
from the garden foreran them. The soldier’s tread 
was on the outer stair. Now theirs was in the rear 
veranda. With it tinkled their laughter. Out yonder 
hoofs galloped. 

The hidden one stole forth. A book on a table was 
totally engaging the eyes of her hostess and at the in- 
stant grandma reentered laden with roses. Now all 
five were in, and Anna, pouring out words with every 
motion, and curiously eyed by Constance, took the 
flowers to give them a handier form, while Flora rallied 
her kinswoman on wasting their friends’ morning these 


ioo 


Constance Cross-Examines 

busy times, and no one inquired, and no one told, who 
had been here that now had vanished. 


XXI 

CONSTANCE CROSS-EXAMINES 

It was like turning to the light the several facets of 
one of those old-fashioned jewels Flora was privately 
bearing away, to see the five beauties part company: 
“ Good-by, good-by, ” kiss, kiss — ah, the sad waste of 
it! — kiss left, kiss right, “good-by.” 

As the Callenders came in again from the veranda, 
their theme was Flora. “Yet who,” asked Constance, 
“ever heard her utter a moral sentiment?” 

“Oh, her beauty does that,” rejoined the kindly 
Miranda. “As Captain Kincaid said that evening 
he ” 

“Yes, I know. He said he would pass her into 
heaven on her face, and I think it was a very strange 
thing for him to say!” 

“Why?” daringly asked Miranda — and ran from the 
room. 

The hater of whys turned upon her sister: “Nan, 
what’s the matter? . . . Oh, now, yes, there is. 
What made you start when Miranda mentioned — Yes, 
you did. You’re excited, you know you are. When 
we came in from the garden you and Flora were 
both ” 

“Now, Connie ” 

“Pshaw, Nan, I know he’s been here, it’s in your 
face. Who was with him; Charlie?” 


IOI 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“Yes. They just dropped in to say good-by. The 
battery’s ordered to Virginia. Virginia hasn’t seceded 
yet, but he feels sure she will before they can get there, 
and so do I. Don’t you ? If Kentucky and Maryland 
would only ” * 

“Now, Nan, just hush. When does he go?” 

“To-morrow. But as to us” — the girl shrugged 
prettily while caressing her roses — “he’s gone now,” 

“How did he talk?” 

“ Oh — quite as usual.” The head bent low into the 
flowers. “In the one pretty way he has with all of us, 
you know.” • 

Constance would not speak until their eyes met again. 
Then she asked, “Did Charlie and Flora give him any 
chance — to express himself?” 

“Oh, Con, don’t be foolish. He didn’t want any. 
He as much as said so!” 

“ Ye-es,” drawled the bride incredulously, “but ” 

“ Oh, he really did not, Con. He talked of nothing 
but the battery flag and how, because I’d presented it, 
they would forever and ever and ever and ever — ” She 
waved her hands sarcastically. 

“Nan, behave. Come here.” The pair took the 
sofa. “How did he look and act when he first came 
in? Before you froze him stiff?” 

“I didn’t freeze him.” The quiet, hurt denial was 
tremulous. “Wood doesn’t freeze.” The mouth 
drooped satirically: “You know well enough that the 
man who says his tasks have spared him no time to — 


“Nan, honest! Did you give him a fair chance — the 
kind I gave Steve?” 


102 


Constance Cross-Examines 

“Oh, Con! He had all the chance any man ever 
got, or will get, from me.” 

The sister sighed: “Nan Callender, you are the 
poorest fisherman ” 

“ I’m not ! I’m none ! And if I were one ” — the dis- 
claimant glistened with mirth — “I couldn’t be as poor 
a one as he is; he’s afraid of his own bait.” She began 
to laugh but had to force back her tears: “I didn’t 
mean that! He’s never had any bait — for me, nor 
wanted any. Neither he nor I ever — Really, Con, 
you are the only one who’s made any mistake as to 
either of us! You seem to think ” 

“ Oh, dearie, I don’t think at all, I just know. I know 

he’s furiously in love with you Yes, furiously; but 

that he’s determined to be fair to Fred Greenleaf ” 

“Oh!” — a yet wickeder smile. 

“Yes, and that he feels poor. You know that if the 
General ” 

The hearer lifted and dropped both arms: “Oh! — 
to be continued!” 

“Well, I know, too, that he doesn’t believe, anyhow, 
in soldiers marrying. I’ve never told you, sweet, but — 
if I hadn’t cried so hard — Steve would have challenged 
Hilary Kincaid for what he said on that subject the 
night we were married!” 

Anna straightened, flashed, and then dropped again 
as she asked, “Is that all you know?” 

“No, I know what counts for more than all the rest; 
I know you’re a terror to him.” 

Remotely in the terror’s sad eyes glimmered a smile 
that was more than half satisfaction. “You might as 
well call him a coward,” she murmured. 

103 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“Not at all. You know you’ve been a terror to every 
suitor you’ve ever had — except Fred Greenleaf; he’s 
the only one you couldn’t keep frightened out of his wits. 
Now this time I know it’s only because you’re — you’re 
bothered! You don’t know how you’re going to 
feel ” 

“Now, Con ” 

“And you don't want to mislead him, and you’re 
just bothered to death! It was the same way with me.” 

“It wasn’t!” silently said Anna’s lips, her face 
averted. Suddenly she turned and clutched her sister’s 
hands: “Oh, Con, while we talk trifles Flora’s home 
lies in ashes! . . . Yes, he told me so just now.” 

“Didn’t he tell her too?” 

“Why, no, Connie, he — he couldn’t very well. It — 
it would have been almost indelicate, wouldn’t it ? But 
he’s gone now to tell her.” 

“He needn’t,” said Constance. “She knows it now. 
The moment I came in here I saw, through all her light- 
ness, she’d got some heavy news. She must have over- 
heard him, Nan.” 

“Connie, I — I believe she did!” 

“ Well, that’s all right. What are you blushing for ? ” 

“ Blushing ! Every time I get a little warm — ” The 
speaker rose to go, but the sister kept her hand : 

“ Keep fresh for this evening, honey. He’ll be back.” 

“No, he won’t. He doesn’t propose to if he could 
and he couldn’t if he did. To get the battery off to- 
morrow ” 

“It won’t get off to-morrow, nor the next day, nor 
the next. You know how it always is. When Steve — ” 

“Oh, I don’t know anything,” said Anna, pulling 
104 


Same Story Slightly Warped 

free and moving off. “But you, oh, you know it all, 
you and Steve !” 

But the elder beauty was right. The battery did not 
go for more than a fortnight, and Hilary came again 
that evening. Sitting together alone, he and Anna 
talked about their inner selves — that good old sign! 
and when she gave him a chance he told her what 
Greenleaf had said about her and the ocean. Also he 
confided to her his envy of small-statured people, and 
•told how it hurt him to go about showing the bigness 
of his body and hiding the pettiness of his soul. And 
he came the next evening and the next, and the next, 
and the next, and the next. 

XXII 

SAME STORY SLIGHTLY WARPED 

Not literally. That evening, yes, an end of it, but 
not the very next four, did Kincaid spend with Anna. 
It merely looked so to Flora Valcour. 

Even on that first day, after his too prompt forenoon 
gallop from Callender House to the Valcour apartment 
had, of course, only insured his finding Flora not at 
home, all its evening except the very end was passed 
with her, Flora, in her open balcony overlooking the 
old Place d’Armes. His head ringing with a swarm of 
things still to be done and ordered done, he had pur- 
posed to remain only long enough to tell his dire news 
manfully, accept without insistent debate whatever 
odium it might entail, and decently leave its gentle 
recipients to their grief and dismay. What steps they 
io5 


Kincaid’s Battery 

should take to secure compensation it were far better 
they should discuss with Adolphe, who would be here to 
aid them when he, Kincaid, would be in far Virginia. 
The only other imperative matter was that of the young 
schoolma’am’s gold, which must be left in bank. 
Awkward business, to have to ask for it in scrambling 
haste at such a moment. 

But on a starlit balcony with two such ladies as the 
Valcours, to do one’s errands, such errands, in scram- 
bling haste proved not even a military possibility. 
Their greeting inquiries had to be answered : 

“Yes, Charlie was well. He would be along soon, 
with fresh messages from division headquarters. The 
battery was at last — Pardon? . . . Yes, the Callen- 
ders were well — he supposed ! He had seen only Miss 
Anna, and her only for so brief an instant ” 

No, Madame Valcour had merely cleared her throat. 
“That climate is hard on those throat’.” 

He had seen Miss Anna, he resumed, “for so brief 
an instant — on an errand — that he had not made civil 
inquiry after the others, but had left good-by for them 
about as a news-carrier wads and throws in the morning 
paper!” 

It was so pretty, the silvery way the questioning pair 
laughed to each other — at his simile, if that was the 
genuine source of their amusement — that he let himself 
laugh with them. 

“ But how ? ” they further asked. “ He had left good- 
by? Good-day, yes! But for what good-by when juz’ 
returning?” 

“Ah, because here to them, also, it must be good-by, 
and be as brief as there! The battery — he had sent 
106 


Same Story Slightly Warped 

word to them at sunrise, but had just learned that his 
messenger had missed them — the battery was at last 
ordered” — etc. 

“ Mon Dieul ” gasped the old lady as if this was too 
cruelly sudden, and, “Oh, my brother! Oh, Captain 
Kincaid!” beautifully sighed Flora, from whom the 
grandmother had heard the news hours before. 

Yet, “Of course any time ’twould have to be sud- 
den,” they had presently so recovered as to say, and 
Flora, for both, spoke on in accents of loveliest renun- 
ciation. She easily got the promise she craved, that 
no ill should come to Charlie which a commander’s 
care could avert. 

The loss of their Mobile home, which also Madame 
had perfectly known since morning, was broken to them 
with less infelicity, though they would talk cheerily of 
the house as something which no evil ever would or 
could befall, until suddenly the girl said, “Grandma, 
dearest, that night air is not so pretty good for your 
rheum; we better pass inside,” and the old lady, in- 
sistently unselfish, moved a step within, leaving the 
other two on the balcony. There, when the blow came 
at last, Flora’s melodious grievings were soon over, and 
her sweet reasonableness, her tender exculpation not 
alone of this dear friend but even of the silly fellows 
who had done the deed, and her queenly, patriotic self- 
obliteration, were more admirable than can be de- 
scribed. Were, as one may say, good literature. The 
grateful soldier felt shamed to find, most unaccountably, 
that Anna’s positively cruel reception of the same news 
somehow suited him better. It was nearer his own 
size, he said to himself. 

107 


Kincaid’s Battery 

At any rate the foremost need now, on every account, 
was to be gone. But as he rose Flora reminded him 
of “ those few hundred gold?” Goodness! he had 
clean forgotten the thing. He apologized for the lib- 
erty taken in leaving it with her, but — “Oh!” she 
prettily interrupted, “when I was made so proud!” 

Well, now he would relieve her and take it at once to 
a bank cashier who had consented to receive it at his 
house this very night. She assured him its custody had 
given her no anxiety, for she had promptly passed it 
over to another! He was privately amazed: 

“Oh — o-oh — oh, yes, certainly. That was right! To 
whom had she ?” 

She did not say. “Yes,” she continued, “she had 
at once thought it ought to be with some one who could 
easily replace it if, by any strange mishap — flood, fire, 
robbery — it should get lost. To do which would to 
her be impossible if at Mobile her house — ” she tossed 
out her hands and dropped them pathetically. “But 
I little thought, Captain Kincaid — ” she began a heart- 
broken gesture 

“Now, Miss Flora!” the soldier laughingly broke 
out, “if it’s lost it’s lost and no one but me shall lose a 
cent for it!” 

“Ah, that,” cried the girl, with tears in her voice, 
“’tis impossible! ’Twould kill her, that mortification, 
as well as me, for you to be the loser!” 

‘ ‘ Loser ! mortification ! ’ ’ laughed Hilary. ‘ ‘ And what 
should I do with my mortification if I should let you, 
or her, be the loser? Who is she, Miss Flora? If I 
minded the thing, you understand, I shouldn’t ask.” 

Flora shrank as with pain: “Ah, you must not! 

108 


Same Story Slightly Warped 

And you must not guess, for you will surely guess 
wrong!” Nevertheless she saw with joy that he had 
guessed Anna, yet she suffered chagrin to see also that 
the guess made him glad. “And this you must make 
me the promise; that you never, never will let anybody 
know you have discover ’ that, eh?” 

“Oh, I promise.” 

“And you must let her pay it me back — that money — 
and me pay it you. ’Twill be easy, only she mus’ have 
time to get the money, and without needing to tell any- 
body for why, and for why in gold. Alas ! I could have 
kept that a secret had it not have been you are to go 
to-morrow morning ” 

“Oh, rest easy,” said the cheerful soldier, “mum’s 
the word. But, Miss Flora, tell me this: How on earth 
did she lose it?” 

“Captain Kincaid, by the goodness of the heart!” 

“But how did it go; was it ?” 

“Blown up! Blown up with that poor old man in 
the powder-mill! Ah, what do we know about money, 
Captain Kincaid, we silly women? That poor, inno- 
cent child, she lent it to the old gentleman. His theories 
they were so convincing, and she, she was so ambitious 
to do a great patriotic service. ’Twas to make wonders 
for the powder and gun, and to be return’ in three days. 
But that next day ’twas Sunday, and whiles I was 
kneeling in the church the powder, the gun, the old man 
and the money ” 

Hilary gestured facetiously for the narrator: “That’s 
how millions have got to go in this business, and this 
driblet — why, I might have lent it, myself, if I’d been 

here! No, I’m the only loser, and ” 

109 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“Ah, Captain Kincaid, no, no! I implore you, no! 
— and for her sake ! Oh, what are those few hundred 
for her to lose, if so she can only wipe that mistake? 
No, they shall be in the charge of that cashier before 
you’re at Virginia, and that shall be my first news 
written to my brother — though he’ll not comprehend 
except that he is to tell it you.” 

So it was arranged and agreed. As again he moved 
to go she won a new pledge of unending secrecy, and 
Charlie came with a document. Beside the parlor 
lamp, where, with one tiny foot covertly unslippered for 
the easement of angry corns, Madame sat embroidering, 
Kincaid broke the seal and read. He forced a scowl, 
but through it glimmered a joy in which Flora discerned 
again the thought of Anna. “Charlie,” he said as a 
smile broke through, “prepare yourself.” 

“Now, Captain, if those old imbeciles ” 

The commander’s smile broadened: “Our battery, 
ladies and gentlemen, can’t go for a week.” 

All laughed but Charlie. He swore at the top of his 
voice and threw himself from the room. 

When his Captain had followed, Flora, standing and 
smiling, drew from her bosom a small, well-filled jewel- 
bag, balanced it on her uplifted palm and, rising to her 
toes, sang, “At last, at last, grace au del , money is 
easy!” 

“Yet at the same time my gifted granddaughter,” 
remarked the old lady, in her native tongue and intent 
on her embroidery, “is uneasy, eh?” 

Flora ignored the comment. She laid a second palm 
on the upraised booty, made one whole revolution, her 
soft crinoline ballooning and subsiding with a seductive 


no 


Same Story Slightly Warped 

swish as she paused: “And you shall share these bless- 
ings, grannie, love, although of the assets themselves ,, 
— she returned the bag to its sanctuary and smoothed 
the waist where the paper proceeds of the school- 
mistress’s gold still hid — “you shall never handle a 
dime.” She sparkled airily. 

“No?” said Madame, still moving the needle and 
still in French. “Nevertheless, morning and evening 
together, our winnings are — how much?” 

“Ours?” melodiously asked the smiling girl, “they 
are not ours, they are mine. And they are — at the 
least” — she dropped to her senior’s footstool and spoke 
caressingly low — “a clean thousand! Is not that sweet 
enough music to the ear of a venerable” — she whis- 
pered — “cormorant?” She sparkled anew. 

“I am sorry,” came the mild reply, “you are in such 
torture you have to call me names. But it is, of course, 
entirely concerning — the house — ahem!” 

Flora rose, walked to a window, and, as she gazed 
out across the old plaza, said measuredly in a hard 
voice : “ Never mind ! Never mind her — or him either. 
I will take care of the two of them!” 

A low laugh tinkled from the ancestress: “Ha, ha! 
you thought the fool would be scandalized, and instead 
he is only the more enamored.” 

The girl flinched but kept her face to the window: 
“He is not the fool.” 

“No? We can hardly tell, when we are — in love.” 

Flora wheeled and flared, but caught herself, mu- 
singly crossed the room, returned half-way, and with 
frank design resumed the stool warily vacated by the 
unslippered foot; whose owner was mincing on, just 


hi 


Kincaid’s Battery 

enough fluttered to play defiance while shifting her 
attack — 

“ Home, sweet home ! For our ravished one you will, 
I suppose, permit his beloved country to pay — in its 
new paper money at ’most any discount — and call it 
square, eh?” Half the bitterness of her tone was in its 
sweetness. 

In a sudden white heat the granddaughter clutched 
one aged knee with both hands : “Wait ! If I don’t get 
seven times all it was ever worth, the Yankees shall!” 
Then with an odd gladness in her eyes she added, 
“And she shall pay her share!” 

“You mean — his?” asked the absorbed embroiderer. 
But on her last word she stiffened upward with a low 
cry of agony, shut her eyes and swung her head as if 
about to faint. Flora had risen. 

“Oh-h-h!” the girl softly laughed, “was that your 
foot?” 


XXIII 

“soldiers!” 

With what innocent openness did we do everything 
in ’61! “Children and fools” could not tell the truth 
any faster or farther than did our newspapers — Pica- 
yune, Delta , True Delta , Crescent , L’Abeille, and UEs- 
tajette du Sud. After every military review the exact 
number in line and the name of every command and 
commander were hurried into print. When at last we 
began to cast siege guns, the very first one was defiantly 
proclaimed to all the Confederacy’s enemies : an eight- 
inch Dahlgren, we would have them to know. Kincaid 


112 


“Soldiers!” 


and his foundry were given full credit, and the defence 
named where the “iron monster” was to go, if not the 
very embrasure designated into which you must fire to 
dismount it. 

The ladies, God bless them, were always free to pass 
the guard on the city side of that small camp and earth- 
work, where with the ladies’ guns “the ladies’ man” 
had worn the grass off all the plain and the zest of 
novelty out of all his nicknamers, daily hammering — 
he and his only less merciful lieutenants — at their ever- 
lasting drill. 

Such ladies ! Why shouldn’t they pass ? Was it not 
safe for the cause and just as safe for them ? Was not 
every maid and matron of them in the “Ladies’ Society 
of the Confederate Army” — whereof Miss Callender 
was a secretary and Miss Valcour one of the treasurers ? 
And had not the fellows there, owing to an influence or 
two in the camp itself and another or two just outside 
it, all become, in a strong, fine sense and high degree, 
ladies’ men? It was good for them spiritually, and 
good for their field artillery evolutions, to be watched 
by maidenly and matronly eyes. Quite as good was it, 
too, for their occasional heavy-gun practice with two 
or three huge, new-cast, big-breeched “hell-hounds,” 
as Charlie and others called them, whose tapering black 
snouts lay out on the parapet’s superior slope, fondled 
by the soft Gulf winds that came up the river, and 
snuffing them for the taint of the enemy. 

One afternoon when field-gun manoeuvres were at a 
close, Kincaid spoke from the saddle. Facing him 
stood his entire command, “in order in the line,” their 
six shining pieces and dark caissons and their twice six 


Kincaid’s Battery 

six-horse teams stretching back in six statuesque rows, 
each of the three lieutenants — Bartleson, Villeneuve, 
Tracy — in the front line, midway between his two guns, 
the artificers just six yards out on the left, and guidon 
and buglers just six on the right. At the commander’s 
back was the levee. Only now it had been empty of 
spectators, and he was seizing this advantage. 

“Soldiers!” It was his first attempt since the flag 
presentation, and it looked as though he would falter, 
but he hardened his brow: “Some days ago you were 
told not to expect marching orders for a week. Well 
the week’s up and we’re told to wait another. Now 
that makes me every bit as mad as it makes you! I 
feel as restless as any man in this battery, and I told the 
commanding general to-day that you’re the worst dis- 
contented lot I’ve yet seen, and that I was proud of you 
for it. That’s all I said to him. But ! if there’s a man 
here who doesn’t yet know the difference between a 
soldierly discontent and unsoldierly grumbling I want 
him to GO! Kincaid’s Battery is not for him. Let 
him transfer to infantry or cavalry. Oh, I know it’s 
only that you want to be in the very first fight, and 
that’s all right! But what we can’t get we don’t 
grumble for in Kincaid’s Battery!” 

He paused. With his inspired eyes on the splendid 
array, visions of its awful destiny only exalted him. 
Yet signs which he dared not heed lest he be con- 
founded told him that every eye so fixed on his was 
aware of some droll distraction. He must speak on. 

“My boys! as sure as this war begins it’s going to 
last. There ’ll be lots of killing and dying, and I warn 
you now, your share’ll be a double one. So, then, no 
114 


“Soldiers!” 


indecent haste. Artillery can’t fight every day. Cav- 
alry can — in its small way, but you may have to wait 
months and months to get into a regular hell on earth. 
All the same you’ll get there! — soon enough — times 
enough. Don’t you know why, when we have to be 
recruited — to fill up the shot holes — they’ll go by the 
cavalry to the infantry, and pick the best men there, 
and promote them to your ranks ? It’s because of how 
you’ve got to fight when your turn comes; like devils, 
to hold up, for all you may know, the butt end of the 
whole day’s bloody business. That’s why — and be- 
cause of how you may have to wait, un-com-plain-ing , 
in rotting idleness for the next tea party.” 

Again he ceased. What was the matter ? There sat 
his matchless hundred, still and straight as stone 
Egyptians, welcoming his every word; yet some influ- 
ence not his was having effect and, strangest of all, was 
enhancing his. 

“One more word,” he said. “You’re sick of the 
drill-ground. Well, the man that’s spoiling for a fight 
and yet has no belly for drill — he — oh, he belongs to 
the cavalry by birth! We love these guns. We’re 
mighty dogg — we’re extremely proud of them. Through 
thick and thin, through fire and carnage and agony, re- 
membering where we got them, we propose to keep 
them; and some proud day, when the trouble’s all over, 
say two years hence, and those of us who are spared 
come home, we propose to come with these same guns 
unstained by the touch of a foe’s hand, a virgin battery 
still. Well, only two things can win that: infernal 
fighting and perpetual toil. So, as you love honor 
and your country’s: cause, wait. Wait in self-respect- 

115 


Kincaid’s Battery 

ful patience. Wait and work, and you shall be at the 
front — the foremost front ! — the very first day and hour 
my best licks can get you there. That’s all.” 

Bartleson advanced from the line; “By section!” he 
called, “right wheel ” 

“Section,” repeated each chief of section, “right 
wheel ” 

“March!” commanded Bartleson. 

“March,” echoed the chiefs, and the battery broke 
into column. “ Forward ! Guide right ! ” chanted Bar- 
tleson, and all moved off save Kincaid. 

He turned his horse, and lo! on the grassy crest of 
the earthwork, pictured out against the eastern pink 
and blue, their summer gauzes filled with the light of 
the declining sun, were half a dozen smiling ladies at- 
tended by two or three officers of cavalry, and among 
them Flora, Constance, and Miranda. 

Anna ? Only when he had dismounted did his eager 
eye find her, where she had climbed and seated herself 
on a siege gun and was letting a cavalier show her how 
hard it would be for a hostile ship, even a swift steamer, 
to pass, up-stream, this crater of destruction, and ergo 
how impossible for a fleet — every ship a terror to its 
fellows the moment it was hurt — to run the gauntlet of 
Forts Jackson and St. Philip on a far worse stretch of 
raging current some eighty miles farther down the river. 

Not for disbelief of the demonstration, but because 
of a general laugh around a tilt of words between Kin- 
caid and the cavalry fellows, Anna lighted down and 
faced about, to find him, for the third time in five days, 
at close range. With much form he drew nearer, a 
bright assurance in his eyes, a sort of boyish yes, for a 
116 


Can a Parked Battery Raise a Dust? 

moment, but the next moment gone as it met in hers a 
womanly no. 

“You little artist,” thought Flora. 


XXIV 

CAN A PARKED BATTERY RAISE A DUST? 

Down in the camp the battery was forming into 
park; a pretty movement. The ladies watched it, the 
cavalrymen explaining. Now it was done. The com- 
mand broke ranks, and now its lieutenants joined the 
fair company and drank its eulogies — grimly, as one 
takes a dram. 

Back among the tents and mess fires — 

“Fellows!” said the boys, in knots, “yonder’s how he 
puts in his ‘best licks’ for us!” But their wanton gaze 
was also fond as it followed the procession of parasols 
and sword-belts, muslins and gold lace that sauntered 
down along the levee’s crest in couples, Hilary and 
Anna leading. 

Flora, as they went, felt a most unusual helplessness 
to avert a course of things running counter to her 
designs. It is true that, having pledged herself to the 
old General to seek a certain issue and to Irby to pre- 
vent it, she might, whichever way the matter drifted, 
gather some advantage if she could contrive to claim 
credit for the trend; an ij which she felt amply able to 
take care of. To keep two men fooled was no great feat, 
nor even to beguile her grandmother, whose gadfly in- 
sistence centred ever on the Brodnax fortune as their 
only true objective; but so to control things as not to 

II 7 


Kincaid’s Battery 

fool herself at last — that was the pinch. It pinched 
more than it would could she have heard how poorly at 
this moment the lover and lass were getting on — as 
such. Her subtle interferences — a mere word yester- 
day, another the day before — were having more suc- 
cess than she imagined, not realizing how much they 
were aided by that frantic untamableness to love’s 
yoke, which, in Hilary only less than in Anna, quali- 
fied every word and motion. 

Early in the talk of these two Hilary had mentioned 
his speech just made> presently asking with bright ab- 
ruptness how Anna liked it and, while Anna was getting 
her smile ready for a safe reply, had added that he never 
could have made it at all had he dreamed she was 
looking on. “Now if she asks why,” he thought to 
himself in alarm, “I’ve got to blurt it out!” 

But she failed to ask; only confessed herself unfit to 
judge anybody’s English. 

“English! oh, pass the English!” he said, he “knew 
how bad that was.” What he wanted her criticism on 
was — “its matter — its spirit — whichever it was, matter 
or spirit!” How comical that sounded! They took 
pains that their laugh should be noticed behind 
them. Flora observed both the laugh and the pains- 
taking. 

“Matter or spirit,” said Anna more gravely, “I can’t 
criticise it. I can’t even praise it — oh! but that’s only 
be — because I haven’t — the courage!” 

The lover’s reply was low and full of meaning: 
“Would you praise it if you had the courage?” 

She could have answered trivially, but something 
within bade her not. “Yes,” she murmured, “I 
118 


Can a Parked Battery Raise a Dust? 

would.” It was an awful venture, made unpreparedly, 
and her eyes, trying to withstand his, dropped. Yet 
they rallied splendidly — “They’ve got to!” said some- 
thing within her — and, “I could,” she blushingly 
qualified, “but — I could criticise it too!” 

His heart warmed at her defiant smile. “I’d rather 
have that honor than a bag of gold!” he said, and saw 
his slip too late. Gold! Into Anna’s remembrance 
flashed the infatuation of the poor little schoolmistress, 
loomed Flora’s loss and distress and rolled a smoke of 
less definite things for which this man was going un- 
punished while she, herself, stood in deadly peril of 
losing her heart to him. 

“Oh, Captain Kincaid!” Like artillery wheeling 
into action came her inconsequent criticism, her eyes 
braving him at last, as bright as his guns, though flash- 
ing only tears. “It was right enough for you to extol 
those young soldiers’ willingness to serve their country 
when called. But, oh, how could you commend their 
chafing for battle and slaughter ? ” 

“Ah, Miss Anna, you ” 

“Oh, when you know that the sooner they go the 
sooner comes the heartache and heartbreak for the 
hundreds of women they so light-heartedly leave behind 
them! I looked from Charlie to Flora ” 

“You should have looked to Victorine. She wants 
the boy to go and her dad to go with him.” 

“Poor thoughtless child!” 

“Why, Miss Anna, if I were a woman, and any man 
— with war coming on — could endure to hang back at 
home for love of me, I should feel ” 

“Captain Kincaid! What we womenkind may feel 
119 


Kincaid’s Battery 

is not to the point. It’s how the men themselves feel 
toward the women who love them.” 

“They ought,” replied the soldier, and his low voice 
thrilled like a sounding-board, “to love the women — 
out of every fibre of their being.” 

“Ah!” murmured the critic, as who should say, 
“checkmate!” 

“And yet — ” persisted this self-sung “ladies’ man” — 

“Yet what?” she softly challenged. (Would he 
stand by his speech, or his song ?) 

“Why, honestly, Miss Anna, I think a man can love 
a woman — even his heart’s perfect choice — too much. 
I know he can!” 

The small lady gave the blunderer a grave, brief, 
now-you-^a^e-done-it glance and looked down. “ Well, 
I know,” she measuredly said, “that a man who can 
tell a woman that, isn’t capable of loving her half 
enough.” She turned to go back, with a quickness 
which, I avow, was beautifully and tenderly different 
from irritation, yet which caused her petticoat’s frail 
embroidery to catch on one of his spurs and cling till 
the whole laughing bevy had gathered round to jest 
over Flora’s disentanglement of it. 

“But really, Nan, you know,” said Constance that 
evening in their home, “you used to believe that 
yourself! The day Steve left you said almost ex- 
act ” 

“Con — ? Ah, Con! I think the sister who could 
remind a sister of that — !” The sufferer went slowly 
up to her room, where half an hour later she was found 
by Miranda drying her bathed eyes at a mirror and 


120 


“He Must Wait,” Says Anna 

instantly pretending that her care was for any other 
part of her face instead. 

“Singular,” she remarked, “what a dust that battery 
can raise!” 


XXV 

“he must wait,” says anna 

About the middle of the first week in April — when 
the men left in the stores of Common, Gravier, Poydras, 
or Tchoupitoulas street could do nothing but buy the 
same goods back and forth in speculation loathed by 
all who did not do it, or whittle their chairs on the 
shedded sidewalks and swap and swallow flaming 
rumors and imprecate the universal inaction and mis- 
management — there embarked for Pensacola 

“What? Kincaid’s Bat ?” 

“No-o, the Zouaves! Infantry! when the one only 
sane thing to do,” cried every cannoneer of Camp 
Callender — in its white lanes or on three-hours’ leave 
at home on Bayou Road or Coliseum Square or Elysian 
Fields or Prytania street — “the one sane thing to do,” 
insisted the growingly profane lads to their elders, and 
assented the secretly pained elders to them, “the one 
thing that, if only for shame’s sake, ought to have been 
done long ago, was to knock Fort Pickens to HELL 
with SHELL!” Sadly often they added the tritest 
three-monosyllabled expletive known to red-hot Eng- 
lish. 

Charlie — mm-mm! how he could rip it out! Sam 
Gibbs, our veritable Sam, sergeant of the boy’s gun, 
“Roaring Betsy,” privately remarked to the Captain 


121 


Kincaid’s Battery 

what a blank-blank shame it was, not for its trivial self, 
of course, but in view of the corruptions to which it 
opened the way. And the blithe commander, in the 
seclusion of his tent, standing over the lad and holding 
him tenderly by both pretty ears, preached to him of 
his sister and grandmother until with mute rage the 
youngster burned as red as his jacket facings; and 
then of the Callenders — “who gave us our guns, and 
one of whom is the godmother of our flag, Charlie” — 
until the tears filled Charlie’s eyes, and he said : 

‘Til try, Captain, but it’s — oh, it’s no use! If any- 
thing could make me swear worse ” — he smiled despair- 
ingly — “it would be the hope of being hauled up again 
for another talk like this!” 

One Sunday, three days after the going of the Zouaves, 
while out in Jackson Square “Roaring Betsy” sang a 
solo of harrowing thunder-claps, the Callenders and 
Valcours, under the cathedral’s roof, saw consecrated 
in its sacred nave the splendid standard of the Chas- 
seurs-a-Pied. 

Armed guards, keeping the rabble out, passed the 
ladies in before the procession had appeared in the old 
Rue Conde. But now here it came, its music swelling, 
the crowd — shabbier than last month and more vacant 
of face — parting before it. Carrying their sabres, but 
on foot and without their pieces, heading the column as 
escort of honor, lo, Kincaid’s Battery; rearmost the 
Chasseurs, masses and masses of them; and in be- 
tween, a silver crucifix lifted high above a body of 
acolytes in white lace over purple, ranks of black- 
gowned priests, a succession of cloth-of-gold ecclesias- 
tics, and in their midst the mitred archbishop. 


122 


“He Must Wait,” Says Anna 

But the battery ! What a change since last February! 
Every man as spruce as ever, but with an added air of 
tested capability that inspired all beholders. Only 
their German musicians still seemed fresh from the mint, 
and oh ! in what unlucky taste, considering the ecclesias- 
tics, the song they brayed forth in jaunty staccato. 

“They’re offering us that hand of theirs again,” mur- 
mured Anna to Constance, standing in a side pew; but 
suddenly the strain ceased, she heard Hilary’s voice of 
command turning the column, and presently, through a 
lane made by his men, the Chasseurs marched in to the 
nave, packed densely and halted. Then in close order 
the battery itself followed and stood. Now the loud 
commands were in here. Strange it was to hear them 
ring through the holy place (French to the Chasseurs, 
English to the battery), and the crashing musket-butts 
smite the paved floor as one weapon, to the flash of a 
hundred sabres. 

So said to itself the diary on the afternoon of the next 
day, and there hurriedly left off. Not because of a dull 
rumble reaching the writer’s ear from the Lake, where 
Kincaid and his lieutenants were testing new-siege- 
guns, for that was what she was at this desk and 
window to hear; but because of the L. S. C. A., about 
to meet in the drawing-room below and be met by a 
friend of the family, a famed pulpit orator and greater 
potentate, in many eyes, than even the Catholic arch- 
bishop. 

He came, and later, in the battery camp with the 
Callenders, Valcours, and Victorine, the soldiers clam- 
oring for a speech, ran them wild reminding them 
with what unique honor and peculiar responsibility 
123 


Kincaid’s Battery 

they were the champions of their six splendid guns. 
In a jostling crowd, yet with a fine decorum, they 
brought out their standard and — not to be outdone 
by any Chasseurs under the sky — obliged Anna to 
stand beside its sergeant, Maxime, and with him hold 
it while the man of God invoked Heaven to bless it 
and bless all who should follow it afield or pray for it 
at home. So dazed was she that only at the “amen” 
did she perceive how perfectly the tables had been 
turned on her. For only then did she discover that 
Hilary Kincaid had joined the throng exactly in time to 
see the whole tableau. 

Every officer of the camp called that evening, to say 
graceful things, Kincaid last. As he was leaving he 
wanted to come to the same old point, but she would 
not let him. Oh ! how could she, a scant six hours after 
such a bid from herself? He ought to have seen she 
couldn’t — and wouldn’t ! But he never saw anything — 
of that sort. Ladies’ man indeed! He couldn’t read 
a girl’s mind even when she wanted it read. He went 
away looking so haggard — and yet so tender — and 
still so determined — she could not sleep for hours. 
Nevertheless 

“I can’t help his looks, Con, he’s got to wait! I 
owe that to all womanhood! He’s got to practise to me 
what he preaches to his men. Why, Connie, if I'm 
willing to wait, why shouldn’t he be? Why ?” 

Constance fled. 

Next day, dining with Doctor Sevier, said the Doctor, 
“That chap’s working himself to death, Anna,” and 
gave his fair guest such a stern white look that she had 
to answer flippantly. 


124 


“He Must Wait,” Says Anna 

She and Hilary were paired at table and talked of 
Flora, he telling how good a friend to her Flora was. 
The topic was easier, between them, than at any other 
time since the loss of the gold. Always before, she had 
felt him thinking of that loss and trying to guess some- 
thing about her; but now she did not, for on Sunday, 
in the cathedral, Flora had told her at last, ever so 
gratefully and circumstantially, that she had repaid the 
Captain everything ! yes, the same day on which she had 
first told Anna of the loss; and there was nothing now 
left to do but for her to reimburse Anna the moment 
she could. 

Hilary spoke of Adolphe’s devotion to Flora — hoped 
he would win. Told with great amusement how really 
well his cousin had done with her government claim — 
sold it to his Uncle Brodnax! And Flora — how pict- 
uresque everything she did! — had put — ? yes, they 
both knew the secret — had put the proceeds into one of 
those beautiful towboats that were being fitted up as 
privateers! Hilary laughed with delight. Yes, it was 
for that sort of thing the boys were so fond of her. But 
when Anna avowed a frank envy he laughed with a 
peculiar tenderness that thrilled both him and her, and 
murmured : 

“The dove might as well envy the mocking-bird.” 

“If I were a dove I certainly should,” she said. 

“Well, you are, and you shouldn’t!” said he. 

All of which Flora caught; . if not the words, so truly 
the spirit that the words were no matter. 

“Just as we were starting home,” soliloquized, that 
night, our diary, “the newsboys came crying all around, 
that General Beauregard had opened fire on Fort Sum- 

125 


Kincaid’s Battery 

ter, and the war has begun. Poor Constance ! it’s little 
she’ll sleep to-night.” 

XXVI 

SWIFT GOING, DOWN STREAM 

Strangely slow travelled news in ’6i. After thirty 
hours’ bombardment Fort Sumter had fallen before 
any person in New Orleans was sure the attack had 
been made. When five days later a yet more stu- 
pendous though quieter thing occurred, the tidings 
reached Kincaid’s Battery only on the afternoon of the 
next one in fair time to be read at the close of dress 
parade. But then what shoutings! The wondering 
Callenders were just starting for a drive up-town. At 
the grove gate their horses were frightened out of all 
propriety by an opening peal, down in the camp, from 
“Roaring Betsy.” And listen! 

The black driver drew in. From Jackson Square 
came distant thunders and across the great bend of the 
river they could see the white puff of each discharge. 
What could it mean ? 

“Oh, Nan, the Abolitionists must have sued for 
peace!” exclaimed the sister. 

“No-no!” cried Miranda. “Hark!” 

Behind them the battery band had begun — 

“O, carry me back to old Vir ” 

“Virginia!” sang the three. “Virginia is out! Oh, 
Virginia is out!” They clapped their mitted hands and 
squeezed each other’s and laughed with tears and told 
the coachman and said it over and over. 

126 


Swift Going, Down Stream 

In Canal Street lo! it was true. Across the Neutral 
Ground they saw a strange sight; General Brodnax 
bareheaded ! bareheaded yet in splendid uniform, riding 
quietly through the crowd in a brilliantly mounted 
group that included Irby and Kincaid, while everybody 
told everybody, with admiring laughter, how the old 
Virginian, dining at the St. Charles Hotel, had sallied 
into the street cheering, whooping, and weeping, thrown 
his beautiful cap into the air, jumped on it as it fell, and 
kicked it before him up to one corner and down again 
to the other. Now he and his cavalcade came round 
the Clay statue and passed the carriage saluting. What 
glory was in their eyes! How could our trio help but 
wave or the crowd hold back its cheers! 

Up at Odd Fellows’ Hall a large company was or- 
ganizing a great military fair. There the Callenders 
were awaited by Flora and Madame, thither they 
came, and there reappeared the General and his train. 
There, too, things had been so admirably cut and dried 
that in a few minutes the workers were sorted and busy 
all over the hall like classes in a Sunday-school. 

The Callenders, Valcours, and Victorine were a 
committee by themselves and could meet at Callender 
House. So when Kincaid and Irby introduced a naval 
lieutenant whose amazingly swift despatch-boat was 
bound on a short errand a bend or so below English 
Turn, it was agreed with him in a twinkling — a few 
twinklings, mainly Miranda’s — to dismiss horses, take 
the trip, and on the return be set ashore at Camp 
Callender by early moonlight. 

They went aboard at the head of Canal Street. The 
river was at a fair stage, yet how few craft were at 
127 


Kincaid’s Battery 

either long landing, “ upper” or “ lower, : ” where so 
lately there had been scant room for their crowding 
prows. How few drays and floats came and went on 
the white, shell-paved levees! How little freight was 
to be seen except what lay vainly begging for export — 
sugar, molasses, rice; not even much cotton; it had 
gone to the yards and presses. That natty regiment, 
the Orleans Guards, was drilling (in French, superbly) 
on the smooth, empty ground where both to Anna’s 
and to Flora’s silent notice all the up-river food-stuff s — 
corn, bacon, pork, meal, flour — were so staringly ab- 
sent, while down in yonder streets their lack was be- 
ginning to be felt by a hundred and twenty-five thou- 
sand consumers. 

Backing out into mid-stream brought them near an 
anchored steamer lately razeed and now being fitted 
for a cloud of canvas on three lofty masts instead of 
the two small sticks she had been content with while 
she brought plantains, guava jelly, coffee, and cigars 
from Havana. The Sumter she was to be, and was 
designed to deliver some of the many agile counter- 
thrusts we should have to make against that “block- 
ade” for which the Yankee frigates were already hover- 
ing off Ship Island. So said the Lieutenant, but Con- 
stance explained to him (Captain Mandeville having 
explained to her) what a farce that blockade was going 
to be. 

How good were these long breaths of air off the sea 
marshes, enlivened by the speed of the craft! But how 
unpopulous the harbor! What a crowd of steamboats 
were laid up along the “Algiers” shore, and of Mor- 
gan’s Texas steamers, that huddled, with boilers cold, 
128 


Swift Going, Down Stream 

under Slaughter-House Point, while all the dry-docks 
stood empty. How bare the ship wharves; hardly a 
score of vessels along the miles of city front. About as 
many more, the lieutenant said, were at the river’s 
mouth waiting to put to sea, but the towboats were all 
up here being turned into gunboats or awaiting letters 
of marque and reprisal in order to nab those very ships 
the moment they should reach good salt water. Con- 
stance and Miranda tingled to tell him of their brave 
Flora’s investment, but dared not, it was such a secret! 

On a quarter of the deck where they stood alone, 
what a striking pair were Flora and Irby as side by 
side they faced the ruffling air, softly discussing matters 
alien to the gliding scene and giving it only a dissimula- 
tive show of attention. Now with her parasol he 
pointed to the sunlight in the tree tops of a river grove 
where it gilded the windows of the Ursulines’ Con- 
vent. 

“Hum!” playfully murmured Kincaid to Anna, 
“he motions as naturally as if that was what they were 
talking about.” 

“It’s a lovely picture,” argued Anna. 

“Miss Anna, when a fellow’s trying to read the book 
of his fate he doesn’t care for the pictures.” 

“How do you know that’s what he’s doing?” 

“Pie’s always doing it!” laughed Hilary. 

The word was truer than he meant. The Irby-value 
of things was all that ever seriously engaged the ever 
serious cousin. Just now his eyes had left the shore, 
where Flora’s lingered, and he was speaking of Kin- 
caid. “ I see,” he said, “ what you think : that although 
no one of these things — uncle Brodnax’s nonsense, 
129 


Kincaid’s Battery 

Greenleaf s claims, Hilary’s own preaching against — 
against, eh ” 

“Making brides to-day and widows to-morrow ?” 
“Yes, that while none of these is large enough in 

his view to stop him by itself, yet combined they ” 

“All working together they do it,” said the girl. 
Really she had no such belief, but Irby’s poor wits 
were so nearly useless to her that she found amusement 
in misleading them. 

“Hilary tells me they do,” he replied, “but the more 
he says it the less I believe him. Miss Flora, the fate 
of all my uncle holds dear is hanging by a thread, a 
spider’s web, a young girl’s freak! If ever she gives 
him a certain turn of the hand, the right glance of her 

eye, he’ll be at her feet and every hope I cherish ” 

“ Captain Irby,” Flora softly asked with her tinge of 
accent, “is not this the third time?” 

“Yes, if you mean again that ” 

“That Anna, she is my dear, dear frien’! The fate 
of nothing, of nobody, not even of me — or of — you — ” 
she let that pronoun catch in her throat — “can make 
me to do anything — oh ! or even to wish anything — not 
the very, very best for her!” 

“Yet I thought it was our understanding ” 

“Captain: There is bitwin us no understanding ex- 
cep’” — the voice grew tender — “that there is no under- 
standing bitwin us.” But she let her eyes so meltingly 
avow the very partnership her words denied, that Irby 
felt himself the richest, in understandings, of all men 
alive. 

“What is that they are looking?” asked his idol, 
watching Anna and Hilary. The old battle ground had 
130 


\ 


Hard Going, Up Stream 

been passed. Anna, gazing back toward its townward 
edge, was shading her eyes from the burnished water, 
and Hilary was helping her make out the earthwork 
from behind which peered the tents of Kincaid’s Bat- 
tery while beyond both crouched low against the bright 
west the trees and roof of Callender House — as straight 
in line from here, Flora took note, as any shot or shell 
might ever fly. 

XXVII 

HARD GOING, UP STREAM 

Very pleasant it was to stand thus on the tremulous 
deck of the swiftest craft in the whole Confederate 
service. Pleasant to see on either hand the flat land- 
scape with all its signs of safety and plenty; its orange 
groves, its greening fields of young sugar-cane, its pil- 
lared and magnolia-shaded plantation houses, its white 
lines of slave cabins in rows of banana trees, and its 
wide wet plains swarming with wild birds; pleasant to 
see it swing slowly, majestically back and melt into a 
skyline as low and level as the ocean’s. 

Anna and Kincaid went inside to see the upper and 
more shining portions of the boat’s beautiful ma- 
chinery. No one had yet made rods, cranks, and gauge- 
dials sing anthems; but she knew it was Hilary and an 
artisan or two in his foundry whose audacity in the re- 
making of these gliding, plunging, turning, vanishing, 
and returning members had given them their fine new 
speed-making power, and as he stood at her side and 
pointed from part to part they took on a living charm 
that was reflected into him. Pleasant it was, also, to 

131 


Kincaid’s Battery 

hear two or three droll tales about his battery boys; 
the personal traits, propensities, and soldierly value of 
many named by name, and the composite character 
and temper that distinguished the battery as a com- 
mand; this specific quality of each particular organic 
unit, fighting body, among their troops being as needful 
for commanders to know as what to count on in the 
individual man. So explained the artillerist while the 
pair idled back to the open deck. With hidden vivid- 
ness Anna liked the topic. Had not she a right, the 
right of a silent partner? A secret joy of the bond 
settled on her like dew on the marshes, as she stood at 
his side. 

Hilary loved the theme. The lives of those boys 
were in his hands; at times to be hoarded, at times to 
be spent, in sudden awful junctures to be furiously 
squandered. He did not say this, but the thought was 
in both of them and drew them closer, though neither 
moved. The boat rounded to, her engines stopped, an 
officer came aboard from a skiff, and now she was under 
way again and speeding up stream on her return, but 
Hilary and Anna barely knew it. He began to talk of 
the boys’ sweethearts. Of many of their tender affairs 
he was confidentially informed. Yes, to be frank, he 
confessed he had prompted some fellows to let their 
hearts lead them, and to pitch in and win while 

“Ohl certainly 1” murmured Anna in compassion, 
“some of them.” 

“Yes,” said their captain, “but they are chaps — 
like Charlie — whose hearts won’t keep unless they’re 
salted down and barrelled, and I give the advice not 
in the sweethearts’ interest but ” 

132 


Hard Going. Up Stream 

“Why not? Why shouldn’t a ” The word 

hung back. 

“A lover?” 

“Yes. Why shouldn’t he confess himself in her in- 
terest? That needn’t pledge her.” 

“Oh! do you think that would be fair?” 

“Perfectly!” 

“Well, now — take an actual case. Do you think the 
mere fact that Adolphe truly and stick-to-it-ively loves 
Miss Flora gives her a right to know it?” 

“I do, and to know it a long, long time before he 
can have any right to know whether ” 

“Hum! while he goes where glory waits him ?” 

“Yes.” 

“And lets time ?” 

“Yes.” 

“And absence and distance and rumor try his un- 
supported constancy?” 

“Yes.” 

With tight lips the soldier drew breath. “You know 
my uncle expects now to be sent to Virginia at once?” 

“Yes.” 

“Adolphe, of course, goes with him.” 

“Yes.” 

“Yet you think — the great principle of so-much-for- 
so-much to the contrary notwithstanding — he really 
owes it to her to ” 

Anna moved a step forward. She was thinking what 
a sweet babe she was, thus to accept the surface of 
things. How did she know that this laughing, light- 
spoken gallant, seemingly so open and artless — oh! 
more infantile than her very self! — was not deep and 
133 


Kincaid’s Battery 

complex? Or that it was not he and Flora on whose 
case she was being lured to speculate? The boat, of 
whose large breathings and pulsings she became grow- 
ingly aware, offered no reply. Presently from the 
right shore, off before them, came a strain of band 
music out of Camp Callender. 

“Anna.” 

“What hosts of stars!” said she. “How hoveringly 
they follow us.” 

The lover waited. The ship seemed to breathe 
deeper — to glide faster. He spoke again: “May I tell 
you a secret?” 

“Doesn’t the boat appear to you to tremble more 
than ever?” was the sole response. 

“Yes, she’s running up-stream. So am I. Anna, 
we’re off this time — sure shot — with the General — to 
Virginia. The boys don’t know it yet, but — listen.” 

Over in the unseen camp the strain was once more — 

“I’d offer thee this hand of mine — ” 

“We’re turning in to be landed, are we not?” asked 
Anna as the stars began to wheel. 

“Yes. Do you really believe, Anna, that that song 
is not the true word for a true lover and true soldier, 
like Adolphe, for instance — to say to himself, of course, 
not to her ? 11 

“Oh, Captain Kincaid, what does it matter?” 

“Worlds to me. Anna, if I should turn that song 
into a solemn avowal — to you ” 

“Please don’t! — Oh, I mean — I don’t mean — I — I 
mean ” 

“Ah, I know your meaning. But if I love you, pro- 
134 


Hard Going, Up Stream 

foundly, abidingly, consumingly — as I do, Anna Cal- 
lender, as I do ! — and am glad to pledge my soul to you 
knowing perfectly that you have nothing to confess to 
me ” 

“Oh, don’t, Captain Kincaid, don’t! You are not 
fair to me. You make me appear — oh — we were speak- 
ing only of your cousin’s special case. I don’t want 
your confession. I’m not ready for — for anybody’s! 
You mustn’t make it! You — you ” 

“It’s made, Anna Callender, and it makes me fair 
to you at last.” 

“Oh-h-h!” 

“I know that matters little to you ” 

“Oh, but you’re farther from fair than ever, Captain 
Kincaid; you got my word for one thing and have used 
it for another!” She turned and they tardily followed 
their friends, bound for the gangway. A torch-basket 
of pine-knots blazing under the bow covered flood and 
land with crimson light and inky shadows. The 
engines had stopped. The boat swept the shore. A 
single stage-plank lay thrust half out from her forward 
quarter. A sailor stood on its free end with a coil of 
small line. The crouching earthwork and its fierce 
guns glided toward them. Knots of idle cannoneers 
stood along its crest. A few came down to the water’s 
edge, to whom Anna and Hilary, still paired alone, 
were a compelling sight. They lifted their smart red 
caps. Charlie ventured a query: “It’s true, Captain, 
isn’t it, that Virginia’s out?” 

“I’ve not seen her,” was the solemn reply, and his 
comrades tittered. 

“Yes!” called Constance and Miranda, “she’s out!” 
135 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“Miss Anna,” murmured Hilary with a meekness it 
would have avenged Charlie to hear, “I’ve only given 
you the right you claim for every woman.” 

“Oh, Captain Kincaid, I didn’t say every woman! 
I took particular — I — I mean I ” 

“If it’s any one’s right it’s yours.” 

“I don’t want it! — I mean — I mean ” 

“You mean, do you not? that I’ve no right to say 
what can only distress you.” 

“ Do you think you have ? — Oh, Lieutenant, it’s been 
a perfectly lovely trip! I don’t know when the stars 
have seemed so bright!” 

“They’re not like us dull men, Miss Callender,” was 
the sailor’s unlucky reply, “they can rise to any occa- 
sion a lady can make.” 

“Ladies don’t make occasions, Lieutenant.” 

“Oh, don’t they!” laughed the sea-dog to Hilary. 
But duty called. “No, no, Miss Val — ! Don’t try 
that plank alone! Captain Kincaid, will you give — ? 
That’s right, sir. . . . Now, Captain Irby, you and 
Miss Callender — steady!” 

Seventh and last went the frail old lady, led by Kin- 
caid. She would have none other. She kept his arm 
with definite design while all seven waved the departing 
vessel good-by. Then for the walk to the house she 
shared Irby with Anna and gave Flora to Hilary, with 
Miranda and Constance in front outmanoeuvred by a 
sleight of hand so fleeting and affable that even you or I 
would not have seen it. 


136 


The Cup of Tantalus 


XXVIII 

THE CUP OF TANTALUS 

Queer world. Can you be sure the next pair you 
meet walking together of a summer eve are as starry as 
they look? Lo, Constance and Miranda. Did the 
bride herself realize what a hunger of loneliness was 
hers ? Or Anna and Irby, with Madame between them. 
Could you, maybe, have guessed the veritable tempest 
beneath the maiden’s serenity, or his inward gnashings 
against whatever it was that had blighted his hour with 
the elusive Flora? 

Or can any one say, in these lives of a thousand con- 
cealments and restraints, when things are happening and 
when not, within us or without, or how near we are now to 
the unexpected — to fate? See, Flora and Hilary. He 
gave no outward show that he was burning to flee the 
spot and swing his fists and howl and tear the ground. 

Yet Flora knew; knew by herself; by a cold rage in 
her own fair bosom, where every faculty stood gayly 
alert for each least turn of incident, to foil or use it, 
while they talked lightly of Virginia’s great step, or of 
the night’s loveliness, counting the stars. “ How small 
they look,” she said, “how calm how still.” 

“Yes, and then to think what they really are! so fear- 
fully far from small — or cold — or still!” 

“Like ourselves,” she prompted. 

“Yes!” cried the transparent soldier. "At our 
smallest the smallest thing in us is that we should feel 
small. And how deep down are we calm or cold ? Miss 
Flora, I once knew a girl — fine outside, inside. Lovers 

J 37 


Kincaid’s Battery 

— she had to keep a turnstile. I knew a pair of them. 
To hear those two fellows separately tell what she was 
like, you couldn’t have believed them speaking of the 
same person. The second one thought the first had 
— sort o’ — charted her harbor for him; but when he 
came to sail in, ’pon my soul, if every shoal on the chart 
wasn’t deep water, and every deep water a fortified 
shore — ha, ha, ha!” 

Flora’s smile was lambent “Yes,” she said, “that 
sweet Anna she’s very intric-ate.” Hilary flamed and 
caught his breath, but she met his eyes with the placidity 
of the sky above them. 

Suddenly he laughed: 44 Now I know what I am! 
Miss Flora, I — I wish you’d be my pilot.” 

She gave one resenting sparkle, but then shook her 
averted head tenderly, murmured “Impossible,” and 
smiled. 

“You think there’s no harbor there?” 

“Listen,” she said. 

‘Yes, I hear it, a horse.” 

“Captain Kincaid?” 

“Miss Flora?” 

“For dear Anna’s sake and yours, shall I be that 
little bit your pilot, to say ?” 

“What! to say, Don’t see her to-night?” 

Flora’s brow sank. 

“May I go with you, then, and learn why?” The 
words were hurried, for a horseman was in front and 
the others had so slackened pace that all were again in 
group. Anna caught Flora’s reply: 

“No, your cousin will be there. But to-morrow 
evening, bif-ore ” 

138 


The Cup of Tantalus 

" Yes, ’ * he echoed, “ before anything else. I’ll come. 
Whyl” — a whinny of recognition came from the road — 
“why, that’s my horse!” 

The horseman dragged in his rein. Constance 
gasped and Kincaid exclaimed, “Well! since when and 
from where, Steve Mandeville?” 

The rider sprang clanking to the ground and whipped 
out a document. All pressed round him. He gave 
his bride two furious kisses, held her in one arm and 
handed the missive to Kincaid: 

“With the compliment of G6n6ral Brodnax!” 

Irby edged toward Flora, drawn by a look. 

Hilary spoke: “Miss Anna, please hold this paper 
open for me while I — Thank you.” He struck a 
match. The horse’s neck was some shelter and the 
two pressed close to make more, yet the match flared. 
The others listened to Mandeville: 

“And ’twas me dizcover’ that tranzportation, juz’ 
chanzing to arrive by the railroad ” 

“Any one got a newspaper?” called Hilary. “Steve 
— yes, let’s have a wisp o’ that.” 

The paper burned and Hilary read. “Always the 
man of the moment, me!” said Mandeville. “And 
also ’t is thangs to me you are the firs’ inform’, and if 
you are likewise the firs’ to ripport ” 

“Thank you!” cried Kincaid, letting out a stirrup 
leather. “Adolphe, will you take that despatch on to 
Bartleson?” He hurried to the other stirrup. 

“ Tell him no!” whispered Flora, but in vain, so 
quickly had Anna handed Irby the order. 

“Good-night, all!” cried Hilary, mounting. He 
wheeled, swung his cap and galloped. 

139 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“Hear him!” laughed Miranda to Flora, and from 
up the dim way his song came back: 

“ 4 1 can’t stand the wilderness 
But a few days, a few days.*” 

Still swinging his cap he groaned to himself and 
dropped his head, then lifted it high, shook his locks 
like a swimmer, and with a soft word to his horse sped 
faster. 

“Yo’ pardon, sir,” said Mandeville to Irby, declining 
the despatch, “I wou’n’t touch it. For why he di’n’ 
h-ask me ? But my stable is juz yondeh. Go, borrow 
you a horse — all night ’f you like.” 

Thence Irby galloped to Bartleson’s tent, returned to 
Callender House, dismounted and came up the steps. 
There stood Anna, flushed and eager, twining arms 
with the placid Flora. “Ah,” said the latter, as he 
offered her his escort home, “but grandma and me, 


Anna broke in: “They’re going to stay here all night 
so that you may ride at once to General Brodnax. 
Even we girls, Captain Irby, must do all we can to help 
your cousin get away with the battery, the one wish of 
his heart!” She listened, untwined and glided into the 
house. 

Instantly Flora spoke: “Go, Adolphe Irby, go! Ah, 
snatch your luck, you lucky — man ! Get him away to- 
night, cost what cost 1 ” Her fingers pushed him. He 
kissed them. She murmured approvingly, but tore 
them away: “Go, go, go-o!” 

Anna, pacing her chamber, with every gesture of 
self-arraignment and distress, heard him gallop. Then 
140 


The Cup of Tantalus 

standing in her opened window she looked off across 
the veranda’s balustrade and down into the camp, where 
at lines of mess-fires like strings of burning beads the 
boys were cooking three days’ rations. A tap came on 
her door. She snatched up a toilet brush: “Come 
in?” 

She was glad it was only Flora. “Cherie,” tinkled 
the visitor, “they have permit’ me!” 

Anna beamed. “ I was coming down,” she recklessly 
replied, touching her temples at the mirror. 

“Yes,” said the messenger, “’cause Mandeville he 
was biggening to tell about Fort Sumter, and I asked 
them to wait — ah” — she took Anna’s late pose in the 
window — “how plain the camp!” 

“Yes,” responded Anna with studied abstraction, 
“when the window happens to be up. It’s so warm to- 
night, I ” 

“Ah, Anna!” 

“What, dear?” In secret panic Anna came and 
looked out at Flora’s side caressingly. 

“At last,” playfully sighed the Creole, “’tis good-by, 
Kincaid’s Battery. Good-by, you hun’red good fellows, 
with yo’ hun’red horses and yo’ hun’red wheels and yo’ 
hun’red hurras.” 

“And hundred brave, true hearts!” said Anna. 

“Yes, and good-by, Bartleson, good-by, Tracy, good- 
by ladies’ man ! — my dear, tell me once more ! For him 
why always that name?” Both laughed. 

“I don’t know, unless it’s because — well — isn’t it — 
because every lady has a piece of his heart and — no one 
wants all of it?” 

“Ah! no one? — when so many? ” 


Kincaid’s Battery 

4 ‘Now, Flora, suppose some one did! What of it, if 
he can’t, himself, get his whole heart together to give 
it to any one?” The arguer offered to laugh again, 
but Fldra was sad: 

“You bil-ieve he’s that way — Hilary Kincaid?” 

“There are men that way, Flora. It’s hard for us 
women to realize, but it’s true!” 

“Ah, but for him! For him that’s a dreadful!” 

“Why, no, dear, I fancy he’s happiest that way.” 

“But not best, no! And there’s another thing — his 
uncle! You know ab-out that, I su’pose?” 

“Yes, but he — come, they’ll be sending ” 

“ No, — no ! a moment ! Anna ! Ah, Anna, you are 
too wise for me! Anna, do you think” — the pair 
stood in the room with the inquirer’s eyes on the 
floor — “you think his cousin is like that?” 

Anna kissed her temples, one in pity, the other in 
joy: “No, dear, he’s not — Adolphe Irby is not.” 

On the way downstairs Flora seized her hands: 
“ Oh, Anna, like always — this is just bit- win us ? Ah, 
yes. And, oh, I wish you’d try not to bil-ieve that way 
— ab-out his cousin! Me, I hope no! And yet ” 

“Yet what, love?” (Another panic.) 

“Nothing, but — ah, he’s so ki-ind to my brother! 
And his cousin Adolphe,” she whispered as they moved 
on down, “I don’t know, but I fear perchanze he don’t 
like his cousin Adolphe — his cousin Adolphe — on the 
outside, same as the General, rough — ’t is a wondrous 
how his cousin Adolphe is fond of him!” 

Poor Anna. She led the way into the family group 
actually wheedled into the belief that however she had 
blundered with her lover, with Flora she had been 
142 


A Castaway Rose 

clever. And now they heard the only true account of 
how Captain Beauregard and General Steve had taken 
Fort Sumter. At the same time every hearer kept 
one ear alert toward the great open windows. Yet 
nothing came to explain that Kincaid’s detention up- 
town was his fond cousin’s contriving, and Sumter’s 
story was at its end when all started at once and then 
subsided with relief as first the drums and then the 
bugles sounded — no alarm, but only, drowsily, “taps,” 
as if to say to Callender House as well as to the camp, 
“Go to slee-eep ... Go to slee-eep ... Go to 
bed, go to bed, go to slee-eep ... Go to slee-eep, go 
to slee-eep ... Go to slee-ee-eep.” 

XXIX 

A CASTAWAY ROSE 

Gone to sleep the camp except its sentinels, and all 
Callender House save one soul. Not Miranda, not the 
Mandevilles, nor Madame Valcour, nor any domestic. 
Flora knew, though it was not Flora. In her slumbers 
she knew. 

Two of the morning. Had the leader, the idol of 
Kincaid’s Battery, failed in his endeavor? Anna, on 
her bed, half disrobed, but sleepless yet, still prayed he 
might not succeed. Just this one time, oh, Lord! this 
one time! With Thee are not all things possible? 
Canst Thou not so order all things that a day or two’s 
delay of Kincaid’s Battery need work no evil to the 
Cause nor any such rending to any heart as must be 
hers if Kincaid’s Battery should go to-night? Softly 

M3 


Kincaid’s Battery 

the stair clock boomed three. She lifted her head and 
for a full three minutes harkened toward the camp. 
Still no sound there, thank God ! She turned upon her 
pillow. 

But — what ! Could that be the clock again, and had 
she slumbered? “Three, four,” murmured the clock. 
She slipped from her bed and stole to the window. Just 
above the low, dim parapet, without a twinkle, the 
morning star shone large, its slender, mile-long radiance 
shimmering on the gliding river. In all the scented 
landscape was yet no first stir of dawn, but only clear- 
ness enough to show the outlines of the camp ground. 
She stared. She stared again! Not a tent was stand- 
ing. Oh! and oh! through what bugling, what rolling 
of drums and noise of hoofs, wheels, and riders had she 
lain oblivious at last? None, really; by order of the 
commanding general — on a private suggestion of Irby’s, 
please notice, that the practice would be of value — 
camp had been struck in silence. But to her the sole 
fact in reach was that all its life was gone ! 

Sole fact? Gone? All gone? What was this long 
band of darkness where the gray road should be, in the 
dull shadow of the levee? Oh, God of mercy, it was 
the column ! the whole of Kincaid’s Battery, in the saddle 
and on the chests, waiting for the word to march! Ah, 
thou ladies’ man ! Thus to steal away ! Is this your 
profound — abiding — consuming love ? The whisper 
was only in her heart, but it had almost reached her lips, 
when she caught her breath, her whole form in a tremor. 
She clenched the window-frame, she clasped her heaving 
side. 

For as though in reply, approaching from behind the 
144 


A Castaway Rose 

house as if already the producer had nearly made its 
circuit, there sounded close under the balustrade the 
walking of a horse. God grant no other ear had noted 
it! Now just beneath the window it ceased. Hilary 
Kincaid! She could not see, but as sure as sight she 
knew. Her warrior, her knight, her emperor now at 
last, utterly and forever, she his, he hers, yet the last 
moment of opportunity flitting by and she here helpless 
to speak the one word of surrender and possession. 
Again she shrank and trembled. Something had 
dropped in at the window. There it lay, small and 
dark, on the floor. She snatched it up. Its scant tie 
of ribbon, her touch told her, was a bit of the one she 
had that other time thrown down to him, and the thing 
it tied and that looked so black in the dusk was a red, 
red rose. 

She pressed it to her lips. With quaking fingers 
that only tangled the true-love knot and bled on the 
thorns, she stripped the ribbon off and lifted a hand 
high to cast it forth, but smote the sash and dropped 
the emblem at her own feet. In pain and fear she 
caught it up, straightened, and glanced to her door, the 
knot in one hand, the rose in the other, and her lips 
apart. For at some unknown moment the door had 
opened, and in it stood Flora Valcour. 

Furtively into a comer fluttered rose and ribbon 
while the emptied hands extended a counterfeit wel- 
come and beckoned the visitor’s aid to close the win- 
dow. As the broad sash came down, Anna’s heart, in 
final despair, sunk like lead, or like the despairing heart 
of her disowned lover in the garden, Flora’s heart the 
meantime rising like a recovered kite. They moved 
145 


Kincaid’s Battery 

from the window with their four hands joined, the de- 
jected girl dissembling elation, the elated one dejection. 

“I don’t see,” twittered Anna, “how I should have 
closed it! How chilly it gets toward ” 

“Ah!” tremulously assented the subtler one. “And 
such a dream! I was oblige’ to escape to you!” 

“And did just right!” whispered and beamed poor 
Anna. “What did you dream, dear?” 

“ I dremp the battery was going! and going to a battle ! 
and with the res’ my brother! And now ” 

“Now it’s but a dream!” said her comforter. 

“Anna!” the dreamer flashed a joy that seemed 
almost fierce. She fondly pressed the hands she held 
and drew their owner toward the ill-used rose. “ Dear- 
est, behold me! a thief, yet innocent!” 

Anna smiled fondly, but her heart had stopped, her 
feet moved haltingly. A mask of self-censure poorly 
veiled Flora’s joy, yet such as it was it was needed. Up 
from the garden, barely audible to ears straining for it, 
yet surging through those two minds like a stifling smoke, 
sounded the tread of the departing horseman. 

“Yes,” murmured Anna, hoping to drown the foot- 
fall, and with a double meaning though with sincere 
tenderness, “you are stealing now, not meaning to.” 

“Now?” whispered the other, “how can that be?” 
though she knew. “Ah, if I could steal now your 
heart al-50! But I’ve stolen, I fear, only — your — con- 
fidenze!” Between the words she loosed one hand, 
stooped and lifted the flower. Each tried to press it to 
the other’s bosom, but it was Anna who yielded. 

“I’d make you take it,” she protested as Flora pinned 
it on, “if I hadn’t thrown it away.” 

146 


A Castaway Rose 

“Dearest/’ cooed the other, “that would make me a 
thief ag-ain, and this time guilty.” 

“Can’t I give a castaway rose to whom I please?” 

“Not this one. Ah, sweet, a thousand thousand 
pardon!” — the speaker bent to her hearer’s ear — “I 
saw you when you kiss’ it — and before.” 

Anna’s face went into her hands, and face and hands 
to Flora’s shoulder; but in the next breath she clutched 
the shoulder and threw up her head, while the far strain 
of a bugle faintly called, “Head of column to the 
right.” 

The cadence died. “Floral your dream is true and 
that’s the battery! It’s going, Flora. It’s gone! Your 
brother’s gone! Your brother, Flora, your brother! 
Charlie! he’s gone” So crying Anna sprang to the 
window and with unconscious ease threw it up. 

The pair stood in it. With a bound like the girl’s 
own, clear day had come. Palely the river purpled and 
silvered. No sound was anywhere, no human sign on 
vacant camp ground, levee, or highroad. “Ah!” — 
Flora made a well pretended gesture of discovery and 
distress — “’tis true! That bugl’ muz’ have meant us 
good-by.” 

“Oh, then it was cruel!” exclaimed Anna. “To 
you, dear, cruel to you to steal off in that way. Run! 
dress for the carriage!” 

Flora played at hesitation: “Ah, love, if perchanze 
that bugl’ was to call you?” 

“ My dear ! how could even he — the ‘ ladies’ man,’ ha, 
ha ! — imagine any true woman would come to the call 
of a bugle? Go! while I order the carriage.” 

They had left the window. The hostess lifted her 
147 


Kincaid’s Battery 

hand toward a bell-cord but the visitor stayed it, ab- 
sently staring while letting herself be pressed toward the 
door, thrilled with a longing as wild as Anna’s and for 
the same sight, yet cunningly pondering. Nay, wait- 
ing, rather, on instinct, which the next instant told her 
that Anna would inevitably go herself, no matter who 
stayed. 

“ You’ll come al-long too?” she pleadingly asked. 

“No, dear, I cannot! Your grandmother will, of 
course, and Miranda.” The bell-cord was pulled. 

“Anna, you must go, else me, I will not!” 

“Ah, how can I? Dear, dear, you’re wasting such 
golden moments! Well, I’ll go with you! Only make 
haste while I call the others — stop!” Their arms fell 
lightly about each other’s neck. “You’ll never tell on 
me? . . . Not even to Miranda? . . . Nor h-his — 
nis uncle? . . . Nor” — the petitioner pressed closer 
with brightening eyes — “nor his — cousin?” 

Softly Flora’s face went into her hands, and face and 
hands to Anna’s shoulder, as neat a reduplication as 
ever was. But suddenly there were hoof-beats again. 
Yes, coming at an easy gallop. Now they trotted 
through the front gate. The eyes of the two stared. 
“A courier,” whispered Anna, “to Captain Mande- 
ville!” though all her soul hoped differently. 

Only a courier it was. So said the maid who came 
in reply to the late ring, but received no command. 
The two girls, shut in together, Anna losing moments 
more golden than ever, heard the rider at the veranda 
steps accost the old coachman and so soon after greet 
Mandeville that it was plain the captain had already 
been up and dressing. 


148 


A Castaway Rose 

“It’s Charlie!” breathed Anna, and Flora nodded. 

Now Charlie trotted off again, and now galloped 
beyond hearing, while Mandeville’s booted tread re 
ascended to his wife’s room. And now came Con- 
stance: “Nan, where on earth is FI — ? Oh, of course! 
News, Nan! Good news, Flora! The battery, you 
know ?” 

“Yes,” said Anna, with her dryest smile, “it’s 
sneaked off in the dark.” 

“Nan, you’re mean! It’s marching up-town now, 
Flora. At least the guns and caissons are, so as to be 
got onto the train at once. And oh, girls, those poor, 
dear boys ! the train — from end to end it’s to be nothing 
but a freight train!” 

“Hoh!” laughed the heartless Anna, “that’s better 
than staying here.” 

The sister put out her chin and turned again to Flora. 
“But just now,” she said, “the main command are to 
wait and rest in Congo Square, and about ten o’clock 
they’re to be joined by all the companies of the Chas- 
seurs that haven’t gone to Pensacola and by the whole 
regiment of the Orleans Guards, as an escort of honor, 
and march in that way to the depot, led by General 
Brodnax and his staff — and Steve ! And every one who 
wants to bid them good-by must do it there. Of course 
there’ll be a perfect jam, and so Miranda’s ordering 
breakfast at seven and the carriage at eight, and Steve 
— he didn’t tell even me last night because — ” Her 
words stuck in her throat, her tears glistened, she 
gnawed her lips. Anna laid tender hands on her. 

“Why, what, Connie, dear?” 

“ St — Ste — Steve ” 


149 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“Is Steve going with them to Virginia ?” 

The face of Constance went into her hands, and face 
and hands to Anna’s shoulder. Meditatively smiling, 
Flora slipped away to dress. 

XXX 

GOOD-BY, KINCAID’S BATTERY 

At one end of a St. Charles Hotel parlor a group of 
natty officers stood lightly chatting while they covertly 
listened. At the other end, with Irby and Mandeville 
at his two elbows, General Brodnax conversed with 
Kincaid and Bartleson, the weather-faded red and gray 
of whose uniforms showed in odd contrast to the smart- 
ness all about them. 

Now he gave their words a frowning attention, and 
now answered abruptly: “Humph! That looks tre- 
mendously modest in you, gentlemen, — what ? . . . 

Well, then, in your whole command if it’s their notion. 
But it’s vanity at last, sirs, pure vanity. Kincaid’s 
Battery ‘ doesn’t want to parade its dinginess till it’s 
done something’ — pure vanity! ‘ Shortest way’ — non- 
sense' The shortest way to the train isn’t the point! 
The point is to make so inspiring a show of you as to 
shame the damned stay-at-homes!” 

“You’ll par-ade,” broke in the flaming Mandeville. 
“worse’ dress than presently, when you rit-urn con- 
queror’!” But that wearied the General more. 

“ Oh, hell,” he mumbled. “ Captain Kincaid, eh — ” 
He led that officer alone to a window and spoke low: 
“About my girl, Hilary, — and me. I’d like to decide 
15 ° 


Good-by, Kincaid’s Battery 

that matter before you show your heels. You, eh,— 
default, I suppose?” 

“No, uncle, she does that. I do only the hopeless 
loving.” 

“The wha-at? Great Lord! You don’t tell me 
you ?” 

“Yes, I caved in last night; told her I loved her. 
Oh, I didn’t do it just in this ashes-of-roses tone of 
voice, but” — the nephew smiled — the General scowled 
— “you should have seen me, uncle. You’d have 
thought it was Mandeville. I made a gorgeous botch 
of it. 

“You don’t mean she ?” 

“Yes, sir, adjourned me sine die. Oh, it’s no use to 
look at me.” He laughed. “The calf’s run over me. 
My fat’s in the fire.” 

The General softly swore and continued his gaze. 
“I believe,” he slowly said, “that’s why you wanted to 
slink out of town the back way.” 

“Oh, no, it’s not. Or at least — well, anyhow, 
uncle, now you can decide in favor of Adolphe.” 

The uncle swore so audibly that the staff heard and 
exchanged smiles: “I neither can nor will decide — 
for either of you — yet! You understand? I don't do 
it. Go, bring your battery.” 

The city was taken by surprise. Congo Square was 
void of soldiers before half Canal street’s new red- 
white-and-red bunting could be thrown to the air. In 
column of fours — escort leading and the giant in the 
bearskin hat leading it — they came up Rampart street. 
On their right hardly did time suffice for boys to climb 
the trees that in four rows shaded its noisome canal; 


Kincaid’s Battery 

on their left not a second too many was there for the 
people to crowd the doorsteps, fill windows and garden 
gates, line the banquettes and silently gather breath and 
ardor while the escort moved by, before the moment 
was come in which to cheer and cheer and cheer, as 
with a hundred flashing sabres at shoulder the dis- 
mounted, heavy-knapsacked, camp-worn battery, Kin- 
caid’s Battery — you could read the name on the flag — 
Kincaid’s Battery! came and came and passed. In 
Canal street and in St. Charles there showed a fierce- 
ness of pain in the cheers, and the march was by 
platoons. At the hotel General Brodnax and staff 
joined and led it — up St. Charles, around Tivoli Circle, 
and so at last into Calliope street. 

Meantime far away and sadly belated, with the Val- 
cours cunningly to blame and their confiding hostesses 
generously making light of it, up Love street hurried 
the Callenders’ carriage. Up the way of Love and 
athwart the oddest tangle of streets in New Orleans, — 
Frenchmen and Casacalvo, Greatmen, History, Victory, 
Peace, Arts, Poet, Music, Bagatelle, Craps, and Mys- 
terious — across Elysian Fields not too Elysian, past 
the green, high-fenced gardens of Esplanade and 
Rampart flecked red-white-and-red with the oleander, 
the magnolia, and the rose, spun the wheels, spanked 
the high-trotters. The sun was high and hot, shadows 
were scant and sharp, here a fence and there a wall 
were as blinding white as the towering fair-weather 
clouds, gowns were gauze and the parasols were six, 
for up beside the old coachman sat Victorine. She it 
was who first saw that Congo Square was empty and 
then that the crowds were gone from Canal street. It 

152 


Good-by, Kincaid’s Battery 

was she who first suggested Dryads street for a short 
cut and at Triton Walk was first to hear, on before, the 
music, — ah, those horn-bursting Dutchmen! could they 
never, never hit it right ? 

“When other lips and other hearts 
Their tale of love shall tell ” 

and it was she who, as they crossed Calliope street, first 
espied the rear of the procession, in column of fours 
again, it was she who flashed tears of joy as they 
whirled into Erato street to overtake the van and she 
was first to alight at the station. 

The General and his staff were just reaching it. Far 
down behind them shone the armed host. The march 
ceased, the music — “then you’ll rememb’” — broke off 
short. The column rested. “Mon Dieu!” said even 
the Orleans Guards, “quel chaleur! Is it not a terrib’, 
thad sun!” Hundreds of their blue kdpis, hundreds of 
gray shakos in the Confederate Guards, were lifted to 
wipe streaming necks and throats, while away down 
beyond our ladies’ ken all the drummers of the double 
escort, forty by count, silently came back and moved 
in between the battery and its band to make the last 
music the very bravest. Was that Kincaid, the crowd 
asked, one of another; he of the thick black locks, tired 
cheek and brow, and eyes that danced now as he smiled 
and talked? “Phew! me, I shou’n’ love to be tall like 
that, going to be shot at, no! ha, ha! But thad’s no 
wonder they are call’ the ladies’ man batt’rie!” 

“Hah! they are not call’ so because him, but because 
themse’v’s ! Every one he is that, and they did n’ got 
the name in Circus street neither, ha, ha! — although— 
153 


Kincaid’s Battery 

Hello, Chahlie Valcour. Good-by, Chahlie. Don’t 
ged shoot in the back — ha, ha! ” 

A command ! How eternally different from the voice 
of prattle. The crowd huddled back to either side- 
walk, forced by the opening lines of the escort backed 
against it, till the long, shelled wagon-way gleamed 
white and bare. Oh, Heaven! oh, home! oh, love! 
oh, war! For hundreds, hundreds — beat Anna’s heart 
— the awful hour had come, had come! She and her 
five companions could see clear down both bayonet- 
crested living walls — blue half the sun-tortured way, 
gray the other half — to where in red kepfe and with 
shimmering sabres, behind their tall captain, stretched 
the dense platoons and came and came, to the crash of 
horns, the boys, the boys, the dear, dear boys who with 
him, with him must go, must go! 

“Don’t cry, Connie dear,” she whispered, though 
stubborn drops were salting her own lips, “it will make 
it harder for Steve.” 

“Harder!” moaned the doting bride, “you don’t 
know him!” 

“Oh, let any woman cry who can,” laughed Flora, 
“I wish I could!” and verily spoke the truth. Arina 
meltingly pressed her hand but gave her no glance. 
All eyes, dry or wet, were fixed on the nearing mass, all 
ears drank the rising peal and roar of its horns and 
drums. How superbly rigorous its single, two-hun- 
dred-footed step. With what splendid rigidity the 
escorts’ burnished lines walled in its oncome. 

But suddenly there was a change. Whether it 
began in the music, which turned into a tune every 
Tom, Dick, and Harry now had by heart, or whether 

*54 


Good-by, Kincaid’s Battery 

a moment before among the blue-caps or gray-shakos, 
neither Anna nor the crowd could tell. Some father 
in those side ranks lawlessly cried out to his red-capped 
boy as the passing lad brushed close against him, 
“Good-by, my son!” and as the son gave him only a 
sidelong glance he seized and shook the sabre arm, 
and all that long, bristling lane of bayonets went out 
of plumb, out of shape and order, and a thousand 
brass-buttoned throats shouted good-by and hurrah. 
Shakos waved, shoulders were snatched and hugged, 
blue kepis and red were knocked awry, beards were 
kissed and mad tears let flow. And still, with a rigor 
the superbest yet because the new tune was so perfect 
to march by, fell the unshaken tread of the can- 
noneers, and every onlooker laughed and wept and 
cheered as the brass rent out to the deafening drums, 
and the drums roared back to the piercing brass, — 

De black-snake love’ de blackbird’ nes’, 

De baby love’ his mammy’s bres’, 

An’ raggy-tag, aw spick-an’-span, 

De ladies loves de ladies’ man. 

I loves to roll my eyes to de ladies! 

I loves to sympathize wid de ladies! 

As long as eveh I knows sugah f’om san’ 

I’s bound to be a ladies’ man. 

So the black-hatted giant with the silver staff strode 
into the wide shed, the puffy-cheeked band reading 
their music and feeling for foothold as they followed, 
and just yonder behind them, in the middle of the 
white way, untouched by all those fathers, unhailed by 
any brother of his own, came Hilary Kincaid with all 
the battery at his neat heels, its files tightly serried but 
155 


Kincaid’s Battery 

its platoons in open order, each flashing its sabres to a 
“ present ” on nearing the General and back to a 
“carry” when he was passed, and then lengthening 
into column of files to enter the blessed shade of the 
station. 

In beside them surged a privileged throng of near 
kin, every one calling over every one’s head, “Good- 
by!” “Good-by!” “Here’s your mother, Johnnie!” 
and, “Here’s your wife, Achille!” Midmost went the 
Callenders, the Valcours, and Victorine, willy-nilly, 
topsy-turvy, swept away, smothering, twisting, laugh- 
ing, stumbling, staggering, yet saved alive by that 
man of the moment Mandeville, until half-way down 
the shed and the long box-car train they brought up 
on a pile of ordnance stores and clung like drift in a 
flood. And at every twist and stagger Anna said in 
her heart a speech she had been saying over and over 
ever since the start from Callender House; a poor com- 
monplace speech that must be spoken though she 
perished for shame of it; that must be darted out just 
at the right last instant if such an instant Heaven would 
only send: “ I take back what I said last night and I’m 
glad you spoke as you did!” 

Here now the moment seemed at hand. For here 
was the officers’ box-car and here with sword in sheath 
Kincaid also had stopped, in conference with the con- 
ductor, while his lieutenants marched the column on, 
now halted it along the train’s full length, now faced it 
against the open cars and now gave final command to 
break ranks. In comic confusion the fellows clambered 
aboard stormed by their friends’ fond laughter at the 
awkwardness of loaded knapsacks, and their retorting 

156 


Good-by, Kincaid’s Battery 

mirth drowned in a new flood of good-bys and adieus, 
fresh waving of hats and handkerchiefs, and made-over 
smiles from eyes that had wept themselves dry. The 
tear-dimmed Victorine called gay injunctions to her 
father, the undimmed Flora to her brother, and Anna 
laughed and laughed and waved in all directions save 
one. There Mandeville had joined Kincaid and the 
conductor and amid the wide downpour and swirl of 
words and cries was debating with them whether it were 
safer to leave the shed slowly or swiftly; and there every 
now and then Anna’s glance flitted near enough for 
Hilary to have caught it as easily as did Bartleson, 
Tracy, every lieutenant and sergeant of the command, 
busy as they were warning the throng back from the 
cars; yet by him it was never caught. 

The debate had ended. He gave the conductor a 
dismissing nod that sent him, with a signalling hand 
thrown high, smartly away toward the locomotive. 
The universal clatter and flutter redoubled. The bell 
was sounding and Mandeville was hotly shaking hands 
with Flora, Miranda, all. The train stirred, groaned, 
crept, faltered, crept on — on — one’s brain tingled to the 
cheers, and women were crying again. 

Kincaid’s eyes ran far and near in final summing up. 
The reluctant train gave a dogged joggle and jerk, 
hung back, dragged on, moved a trifle quicker; and 
still the only proof that he knew she was here — here 
within three steps of him — was the careful failure of 
those eyes ever to light on her. Oh, heart, heart, heart! 
would it be so to the very end and vanishment of all ? 

“I take back — I take — ” was there going to be no 
chance to begin it? Was he grief blind? or was he 

*57 


Kincaid’s Battery 

scorn blind? No matter! what she had sown she 
would reap if she had to do it under the very thunder- 
cloud of his frown. All or any, the blame of estrange- 
ment should be his, not hers! Oh, Connie, Connie! 
Mandeville had clutched Constance and was kissing her 
on lips and head and cheeks. He wheeled, caught a 
hand from the nearest car, and sprang in. Kincaid 
stood alone. The conductor made him an eager sign. 
The wheels of the train clicked briskly. He glanced 
up and down it, then sprang to Miranda, seized her 
hand, cried “ Good-by !” snatched Madame’s, Flora’s, 
Victorine’s, Connie’s, — “ Good-by — Good-by ! ” — and 
came to Anna. 

And did she instantly begin, “I take ?” Not at 

all ! She gave her hand, both hands, but her lips stood 
helplessly apart. Flora, Madame, Victorine, Con- 
stance, Miranda, Charlie from a car’s top, the three 
lieutenants, the battery’s whole hundred, saw Hilary’s 
gaze pour into hers, hers into his. Only the eyes of 
the tumultuous crowd still followed the train and its 
living freight. A woman darted to a car’s open door 
and gleaned one last wild kiss. Two, ten, twenty 
others, while the conductor ran waving, ordering, 
thrusting them away, repeated the splendid theft, and 
who last of all and with a double booty but Constance ! 
Anna beheld the action, though with eyes still captive. 
With captive eyes, and with lips now shut and now 
apart again as she vainly strove for speech, she saw 
still plainer his speech fail also. His hands tightened 
on hers, hers in his. 

“Good-by!” they cried together and were dumb 
again; but in their mutual gaze — more vehement than 


Good-by, Kincaid’s Battery 

their voices joined — louder than all the din about them 
— confession so answered worship that he snatched 
her to his breast; yet when he dared bend to lay a kiss 
upon her brow he failed once more, for she leaped and 
caught it on her lips. 

Dishevelled, liberated, and burning with blushes, she 
watched the end of the train shrink away. On its last 
iron ladder the conductor swung aside to make room 
for Kincaid’s stalwart spring. So! It gained one 
handhold, one foothold. But the foot slipped, the 
soldier’s cap tumbled to the ground, and every on- 
looker drew a gasp. No, the conductor held him, and 
erect and secure, with bare locks ruffling in the wind 
of the train, he looked back, waved, and so passed from 
sight. 

Archly, in fond Spanish, “How do you feel now?” 
asked Madame of her scintillant granddaughter as with 
their friends and the dissolving throng they moved to 
the carriage; and in the same tongue Flora, with a 
caressing smile, rejoined, “I feel like swinging you 
round by the hair.” 

Anna, inwardly frantic, chattered and laughed. “I 
don’t know what possessed me!” she cried. 

But Constance was all earnestness: “Nan, you did 
it for the Cause — the flag — the battery — anything but 
him personally. He knows it. Everybody saw that. 
Its very publicity ” 

“Yes?” soothingly interposed Madame, “’t was a 
so verrie pewblic that ” 

“Why, Flora,” continued the well-meaning sister, 
“Steve says when he came back into Charleston from 

Fort Sumter the ladies ” 

159 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“Of course!” said Flora, sparkling afresh. “Even 
Steve understands that, grandma.” Her foot was on a 
step of the carriage. A child plucked her flowing 
sleeve : 

“Misses! Mom-a say’” — he pressed into her grasp 
something made of broadcloth, very red and golden — 
“here yo’ husband’s cap.” 


XXXI 

VIRGINIA GIRLS AND LOUISIANA BOYS 

Thanks are due to Mr. Richard Thorndyke Smith 
for the loan of his copy of a slender and now extremely 
rare work which at this moment lies before me. “A 
History of Kincaid’s Battery,” it is called, “From Its 
Origin to the Present Day,” although it runs only to 
February, ’62, and was printed (so well printed, on 
such flimsy, coarse paper) just before the dreadful 
days of Shiloh and the fall of New Orleans. 

Let us never paint war too fair; but this small 
volume tells of little beyond the gold-laced year of 
‘ Sixty-one, nor of much beyond Virginia, even over 
whose later war-years the color effects of reminiscence 
show blue and green and sunlit despite all the scarlet 
of carnage, the black and crimson of burning, and the 
grim hues of sickness, squalor, and semi-starvation; 
show green and blue in the sunlight of victory, con- 
trasted with those of the states west and south of her 

It tells — this book compiled largely from correspond- 
ence of persons well known to you and me — of the 
160 


Virginia Girls and Louisiana Boys 

first “eight-days’ crawl” that conveyed the chaffing, 
chafing command up through Mississippi, across East 
Tennessee into south-west Virginia and so on through 
Lynchburg to lovely Richmond; tells how never a 
house was passed in town or country but handkerchiefs, 
neckerchiefs, snatched-off sunbonnets, and Confederate 
flags wafted them on. It tells of the uncounted rail- 
way stations where swarmed the girls in white muslin 
aprons and red-white-and-red bows, who waved them 
in as they came, and unconsciously squinted and made 
faces at them in the intense sunlight. It tells how the 
maidens gave them dainties and sweet glances, and 
boutonnieres of tuberoses and violets, and bloodthirsty 
adjurations, and blarney for blarney; gave them seven 
wild well-believed rumors for as many impromptu 
canards, and in their soft plantation drawl asked which 
was the one paramount “ladies’ man,” and were as- 
sured by every lad of the hundred that it was himself. 
It tells how, having heard in advance that the more 
authentic one was black-haired, handsome, and over- 
towering, they singled out the drum-major, were set 
right only by the roaring laughter, and huddled back- 
ward like caged quails from Kincaid’s brazen smile, 
yet waved again as the train finally jogged on with 
the band playing from the roof of the rear car, — 

“I’d offer thee this hand of mine 
If I could love thee less!” 

To Anna that part seemed not so killingly funny or 
so very interesting, but she was not one of the book’s 
editors. 

Two or three pages told of a week in camp just out- 
161 


Kincaid’s Battery 

side the Virginian capital, where by day, by night, on its 
rocky bed sang James river; of the business quarter 
noisy with army wagons — “rattling o’er the stony 
street,” says the page; of colonels, generals, and states- 
men by name — Hampton, Wigfall, the fiery Toombs, 
the knightly Lee, the wise Lamar; of such and such 
headquarters, of sentinelled warehouses, glowing iron- 
works, galloping aides-de-camp and couriers and arriv- 
ing and departing columns, some as trig (almost) as 
Kincaid’s Battery, with their black servants following 
in grotesque herds along the sidewalks; and some 
rudely accoutred, shaggy, staring, dust-begrimed, in 
baggy butternut jeans, bearing flint-lock muskets and 
trudging round-shouldered after fifes and drums that 
squealed and boomed out the strains of their forgotten 
ancestors: “The Campbells are coming,” “Johnnie 
was a piper’s son,” or — 

“My heart is ever turning back 
To the girl I left behind me.” 

“You should have seen the girls,” laughs the book. 

But there were girls not of the mountains or sand- 
hills, whom also you should have seen, at battery 
manoeuvres or in the tulip-tree and maple shade of 
proud Franklin street, or in its rose-embowered homes 
by night; girls whom few could dance with, or even sit 
long beside in the honeysuckle vines of their porticos, 
without risk of acute heart trouble, testifies the callow 
volume. They treated every lad in the battery like a 
lieutenant, and the “ladies’ man” like a king. You 
should have seen him waltz them or in quadrille or 
cotillon swing, balance, and change them, their eyes 
162 


Virginia Girls and Louisiana Boys 

brightening and feet quickening whenever the tune 
became — 

“Ole malls’ love’ wine, ole mis’ love’ silk, 

De piggies, dey loves buttehmilk.” 

Great week! tar-heel camp-sentries and sand-hill 
street-patrols mistaking the boys for officers, saluting 
as they passed and always getting an officer’s salute in 
return! Hilary seen every day with men high and 
mighty, who wer e as quick as the girls to make merry 
with him, yet always in their merriment seeming, 
he and they alike, exceptionally upright, downright, 
heartright, and busy. It kept the boys straight and 
strong. 

Close after came a month or so on the Yorktown 
peninsula with that master of strategic ruse, Magruder, 
but solely in the dreariest hardships of war, minus all 
the grander sorts that yield glory; rains, bad food, ill- 
chosen camps, freshets, terrible roads, horses sick and 
raw-boned, chills, jaundice, emaciation, barely an occa- 
sional bang at the enemy on reconnoissances and picket- 
ings, and marches and countermarches through blister- 
ing noons and skyless nights, with men, teams, and 
guns trying to see which could stagger the worst, along 
with columns of infantry mutinously weary of forever 
fortifying and never fighting. Which things the book 
bravely makes light of, Hilary maintaining that the 
battery boys had a spirit to bear them better than most 
commands did, and the boys reporting — not to boast 
the special kindness everywhere of ladies for ladies’ 
men — that Hilary himself, oftenest by sunny, but some- 
times by cyclonic, treatment of commissaries, quarter- 
163 


Kincaid’s Battery 

masters, surgeons, and citizens, made their burdens 
trivial. 

So we, too, lightly pass them. After all, the things 
most important here are matters not military of which 
the book does not tell. Of such Victorine, assistant 
editor to Miranda, learned richly from Anna — who 
merely lent letters — without Anna knowing it. Yet 
Flora drew little from Victorine, who was as Latin as 
Flora, truly loved Anna, and through Charlie was a 
better reader of Flora’s Latin than he or Flora or any 
one suspected. 

For a moment more, however, let us stay with the 
chronicle. At last, when all was suffered, the infuriated 
boys missed Ben Butler and Big Bethel! One day 
soon after that engagement, returning through Rich- 
mond in new uniforms — of a sort — with scoured faces, 
undusty locks, full ranks, fresh horses, new harness 
and shining pieces, and with every gun-carriage, limber, 
and caisson freshly painted, they told their wrath to 
Franklin street girls while drinking their dippers of 
water. Also — ‘ ‘ Good-by ! — 

‘I’d offer thee this hand of mine 

They were bound northward to join their own Creole 
Beauregard at a railway junction called . 


164 


Manassas 


XXXII 

MANASSAS 

Femininely enough, our little borrowed book, Mir- 
anda’s and Victorine’s compilation of letters from the 
front, gives no more than a few lines to the first great 
battle of the war. 

Fred Greenleaf was one of its wounded prisoners. 
Hilary cared for him and sought his exchange; but 
owing to some invisible wire-pulling by Flora Valcour, 
done while with equal privacy she showed the captive 
much graciousness, he was still in the Parish Prison, 
New Orleans, in February, ’62, when the book was 
about to be made, though recovered of wounds and 
prison ills and twice or thrice out on his parole, after 
dusk and in civilian’s dress, at Callender House. 

The Callenders had heard the combat’s proud story 
often, of course, not only from battery lads bringing 
home dead comrades, or coming to get well of their 
own hurts, or never to get well of them, but also from 
gold-sleeved, gray-breasted new suitors of Anna (over- 
staying their furloughs), whom she kept from tenderer 
themes by sprightly queries that never tired and con- 
stantly brought forth what seemed totally unsought 
mentions of the battery. And she had gathered the 
tale from Greenleaf as well. Constance, to scandalized 
intimates, marvelled at her sister’s tolerance of his 
outrageous version; but Miranda remembered how 
easy it is to bear with patience (on any matter but one) 
a rejected lover who has remained faithful, and Flora, 
to grandma, smiled contentedly. 


Kincaid’s Battery 

Anna’s own private version (sum of all), though never 
written even in her diary, was illustrated, mind-pictured. 
Into her reveries had gradually come a tableau of the great 
field. Inaccurate it may have been, incomplete, even gro- 
tesquely unfair; but to her it was at least clear. Here — 
through the middle of her blue-skied, pensive contem- 
plation, so to speak — flowed Bull Run. High above it, 
circling in eagle majesty under still, white clouds, the 
hungry buzzard, vainly as yet, scanned the green acres 
of meadow and wood merry with the lark, the thrush, 
the cardinal. Here she discerned the untried gray 
brigades — atom-small on nature’s face, but with Ewell, 
Early, Longstreet, and other such to lead them — holding 
the frequent fords, from Union Mills up to Lewis’s. 
Here near Mitchell’s, on a lonesome roadside, stood 
Kincaid’s Battery, fated there to stay for hours yet, in 
hateful idleness and a fierce July sun, watching white 
smoke-lines of crackling infantry multiply in the land- 
scape or bursting shells make white smoke-rings in the 
bright air, and to listen helplessly to the boom, hurtle 
and boom of other artilleries and the far away cheering 
and counter-cheering of friend and foe. Yonder in the 
far east glimmered Centerville, its hitherward roads, 
already in the sabbath sunrise, full of brave bluecoats 
choking with Virginia dust and throwing away their 
hot blankets as they came. Here she made out Stone 
Bridge, guarded by a brigade called Jackson’s; here, 
crossing it east and west, the Warren ton turnpike, and 
yonder north of them that rise of dust above the trees 
which meant a flanking Federal column and crept west- 
ward as Evans watched it, toward Sudley Springs, ford, 
mill, and church, where already much blue infantry had 
1 66 


Manassas 

stolen round by night from Centerville. Here, leading 
south from these, she descried the sunken Sudley road, 
that with a dip and a rise crossed the turnpike and 
Young’s Branch. There eastward of it the branch 
turned north-east and then south-east between those 
sloping fields beyond which Evans and Wheat were 
presently fighting Burnside; through which Bee, among 
bursting shells, pressed to their aid against such as 
Keyes and Sherman, and back over which, after a long, 
hot struggle, she could see — could hear — the aiders and 
the aided swept in one torn, depleted tumult, shattered, 
confounded, and made the more impotent by their own 
clamor. Here was the many-ravined, tree-dotted, 
southward rise by which, in concave line, the Northern 
brigades and batteries, pressing across the bends of the 
branch, advanced to the famed Henry house plateau — 
that key of victory where by midday fell all the horrid 
weight of the battle; where the guns of Ricketts and 
Griff en for the North and of Walton and Imboden for 
the South crashed and mowed, and across and across 
which the opposing infantries volleyed and bled, 
screamed, groaned, swayed, and drove each other, 
staggered, panted, rallied, cheered, and fell or fought 
on among the fallen. Here cried Bee to the dazed 
crowd, “Look at Jackson’s brigade standing like a 
stone wall.” Here Beauregard and Johnson formed 
their new front of half a dozen states on Alabama’s 
colours, and here a bit later the Creole general’s horse 
was shot under him. Northward here, down the slope 
and over the branch, rolled the conflict, and there on the 
opposite rise, among his routed blues, was Greenleaf 
disabled and taken. 


Kincaid’s Battery 

All these, I say, were in Anna’s changing picture. 
Here from the left, out of the sunken road, came How- 
ard, Heintzelman, and their like, and here in the oak 
wood that lay across it the blue and gray lines spent 
long terms of agony mangling each other. Here early 
n that part of the struggle — sent for at last by Beaure- 
gard himself, they say — came Kincaid’s Battery, whirl- 
ing, shouting, whip-cracking, sweating, with Hilary 
well ahead of them and Mandeville at his side, to the 
ground behind the Henry house when it had been lost 
and retaken and all but lost again. Here Hilary, spur- 
ring on away from his bounding guns to choose them a 
vantage ground, broke into a horrid melee alone and 
was for a moment made prisoner, but in the next had 
handed his captors over to fresh gray coats charging; 
and here, sweeping into action with all the grace and 
precision of the drill-ground at Camp Callender, came 
his battery, his and hers! Here rode Bartleson, here 
Villeneuve, Maxime with the colors, Tracy, Sam 
Gibbs; and here from the chests sprang Violett, Rare- 
shide, Charlie and their scores of fellows, unlimbered, 
sighted, blazed, sponged, reloaded, pealed again, sent 
havoc into the enemy and got havoc from them. Here 
one and another groaned, and another and another 
dumbly fell. Here McStea, and St. Ange, Converse, 
Fusilier, Avendano, Ned Ferry and others limbered up 
for closer work, galloped, raced, plunged, reared, and 
stumbled, gained the new ground and made it a worse 
slaughter-pen than the first, yet held on and blazed, 
pealed, and smoked on, begrimed and gory. Here was 
Tracy borne away to field hospital leaving Avendano 
and McStea groveling in anguish under the wheels, and 
1 68 


Letters 

brave Converse and young Willie Calder, hot-headed 
Fusilier and dear madcap Jules St. Ange lying near 
them out of pain forever. Yet here their fellows 
blazed on and on, black, shattered, decimated, short 
of horses, one caisson blown up, and finally dragged 
away to bivouac, proud holders of all their six Callender 
guns, their silken flag shot-torn but unsoiled and furled 
only when shells could no longer reach the flying foe. 

XXXIII 

LETTERS 

Hardly any part of this picture had come to Anna 
from Hilary himself. 

Yes, they were in correspondence — after a fashion. 
That signified nothing, she would have had you under- 
stand; so were Charlie and Victorine, so were — oh! — 
every girl wrote to somebody at the front; one could not 
do less and be a patriot. Some girl patriots had a 
dozen on their list. Some lads had a dozen on theirs. 

Ah, me! those swan-white, sky-blue, rose-pink 
maidens who in every town and on every plantation 
from Memphis to Charleston, from Richmond to New 
Orleans, despatched their billets by the forlornly pre- 
carious post only when they could not send them by the 
“ urbanity ” of such or such a one! Could you have 
contrasted with them the homeless, shelterless, pencil- 
borrowing, elbow-scratching, musty, fusty tatterde- 
malions who stretched out on the turfless ground beside 
their mess fires to extort or answer those cautious or in- 
cautious missives, or who for the fortieth time drew 
169 


Kincaid’s Battery 

them from hiding to reread into their guarded or un- 
guarded lines meanings never dreamed by their writers, 
you could not have laughed without a feeling of tears, 
or felt the tears without smiling. Many a chap’s epistle 
was scrawled, many a one even rhymed, in a rifle-pit 
with the enemy’s shells bursting over. Many a one was 
feebly dictated to some blessed, unskilled volunteer 
nurse in a barn or smoke-house or in some cannon- 
shattered church. From the like of that who with a 
woman’s heart could withhold reply? Yes, Anna and 
Hilary were in correspondence. 

So were Flora and Irby. So were Hilary and Flora. 
Was not Flora Anna’s particular friend and Hilary’s 
“pilot”'? She had accepted the office on condition 
that, in his own heart’s interest, their dear Anna should 
not know of it. 

“The better part of life” — she wrote — “is it not 
made up of such loving concealments?” 

And as he read the words in his tent he smilingly 
thought, “That looks true even if it isn’t!” 

Her letters were much more frequent than Anna’s 
and always told of Anna fondly, often with sweet praises 
— not so sweet to him — of her impartial graciousness 
to her semicircle of brass-buttoned worshippers. Lately 
Flora had mentioned Greenleaf in a modified way 
especially disturbing. 

If Anna could have made any one a full confidante 
such might have been Flora, but to do so was not in her 
nature. She could trust without stint. Distrust, as we 
know, was intolerable to her. She could not doubt her 
friends, but neither could she unveil her soul. Never- 
theless, more than once, as the two exchanged — in a 
170 


Letters 

purely academical way — their criticisms of life, some 
query raised by Anna showed just what had been pass- 
ing between her and Hilary and enabled Flora to keep 
them steered apart. 

No hard task, the times being so highly calculated to 
make the course of true love a “hard road to travel,” 
as the singing soldier boys called “ Jordan.” Letters, 
at any time, are sufficiently promotive of misunder- 
standings, but in the Confederacy they drifted from 
camp to camp, from pocket to pocket, like letters in 
bottles committed to the sea. The times being such, I 
say, and Hilary and Anna as they were : he a winner of 
men, yes! but by nature, not art; to men and women 
equally, a grown up, barely grown up, boy. That is 
why women could afford to like him so frankly. The 
art of courtship — of men or women — was not in him. 
Otherwise the battery — every gun of which, they say, 
counted for two as long as he was by — must have lost 
him through promotion before that first year was half 
out. The moment he became a conscious suitor, to 
man or woman, even by proxy, his power went from 
him; from pen, from tongue, from countenance. And 
Anna — I may have shown the fact awkwardly, but cer- 
tainly you see — Anna was incurably difficult. 

Too much else awaits our telling to allow here a re- 
cital of their hearts’ war while love — and love’s foes — 
hid in winter quarters, as it were. That is to say, from 
the season of that mad kiss which she had never for- 
given herself (much less repented), to the day of Beau- 
regard’s appeal, early in ’62, to all the plantations and 
churches in Dixie’s Land to give him their bells, bells, 
bells — every bit of bronze or brass they could rake up 
171 


Kincaid’s Battery 

or break off — to be cast into cannon; and to his own 
Louisiana in particular to send him, hot speed, five 
thousand more men to help him and Albert Sidney 
Johnston drive Buel and Grant out of Tennessee. 

Before the battery had got half way to Virginia Hilary 
had written back to Anna his inevitable rhapsody over 
that amazing performance of hers, taking it as patent 
and seal of her final, utter, absolute self-bestowal. And 
indeed this it might have turned out to be had he but 
approached it by a discreet circuit through the sim- 
plest feminine essentials of negative make-believe. But 
to spring out upon it in that straightforward manner — ! 
From May to February her answer to this was the only 
prompt reply he ever received from her. It crowds our 
story backward for a moment, for it came on one of 
those early Peninsula days previous to Manassas, hap- 
pening, oddly, to reach him — by the hand of Villeneuve 
— as he stood, mounted, behind the battery, under a 
smart skirmish fire. With a heart leaping in joyous 
assurance he opened the small missive and bent his 
eyes upon its first lines. 

As he did so a hostile shell, first that had ever come 
so near, burst just in front of his guns. A big lump of 
metal struck one of them on the chase, glanced, clipped 
off half the low top of his forage-cap and struck in the 
trunk of an oak behind him, and as his good horse 
flinched and quivered he looked unwillingly from the 
page toward a puff of white smoke on a distant hill, and 
with a broad smile said — a mere nonsense word; but 
the humor of such things has an absurd valuation and 
persistency in camps, and for months afterward, “ Ah-r? 
— indeed!” was the battery’s gay response to every 
172 


Letters 


startling sound. He had luck in catchwords, this 
Hilary. He fought the scrimmage through with those 
unread pages folded slim between a thumb and fore- 
finger, often using them to point out things, and when 
after it he had reopened them and read them through 
— and through again — to their dizzying close, the battery 

surgeon came murmuring privately 

“Cap, what’s wrong; bad news?” 

“Oh!” said Hilary, looking up from a third reading, 
“what, this? No-o! nothing wrong in this. I was 
wrong. I’m all right now.” 

“No, you’re not, Captain. You come along now and 

lie down. The windage of that chunk of iron has ” 

“Why, Doc, I shouldn’t wonder! If you’ll just keep 
everybody away from me awhile, yourself included, I 
will lie down,” said the unnerved commander, and 
presently, alone and supine, softly asked himself with 
grim humor, “Which chunk of iron?” 

The actual text of Anna’s chunk was never divulged, 
even to Flora. We do not need it. Neither did Flora. 
One of its later effects was to give the slender corre- 
spondence which crawled after it much more historical 
value to the battery and the battery’s beloved home 
city than otherwise it might have had. From Virginia 
it told spiritedly of men, policies, and movements; 
sketched cabinet officers, the president, and the great 
leaders and subleaders in the field — Stuart, Gordon, 
Fitzhugh Lee. It gave droll, picturesque accounts of 
the artillerist’s daily life; of the hard, scant fare and 
the lucky feast now and then on a rabbit or a squirrel, 
turtles’ eggs, or wild strawberries. It depicted moon- 
light rides to dance with Shenandoah girls; the playing 

*73 


Kincaid’s Battery 

of camp charades; and the singing of war, home, and 
love songs around the late camp fire, timed to the antic 
banjo or the sentimental guitar. Drolly, yet with ten- 
derness for others, it portrayed mountain storm, valley 
freshet, and heart-breaking night marches beside totter- 
ing guns in the straining, sucking, leaden-heavy, red 
clay, and then, raptly, the glories of sunrise and sunset 
over the contours of the Blue Ridge. And it explained 
the countless things which happily enable a commander 
to keep himself as busy as a mud-dauber, however idle 
the camp or however torn his own heart. 

From Anna’s side came such stories as that of a flag 
presentation to the Sumter , wherein she had taken 
some minor part; of seeing that slim terror glide down 
by Callender House for a safe escape through the block- 
ading fleet to the high seas and a world-wide fame; of 
Flora’s towboat privateer sending in one large but 
empty prize whose sale did not pay expenses, and then 
being itself captured by the blockaders; of “ Hamlet” 
given by amateurs at the St. Charles Theatre; of great 
distress among the poor, all sorts of gayeties for their 
benefit, bad money, bad management, a grand concert 
for the army in Arkansas, women in mourning as 
numerous as men in uniform, and both men and women 
breaking down in body and mind under the universal 
strain. 

Historically valuable, you see. Yet through all this 
impersonal interchange love shone out to love like lamp- 
light through the blinds of two opposite closed windows, 
and every heart-hiding letter bore enough interlinear 
revealment of mind and character to keep mutual ad- 
miration glowing and growing. We might very justly 
174 


A Free-Gift Bazaar 

fancy either correspondent saying at any time in those 
ten months to impatient or compassionate Cupid what 
Hilary is reported to have said on one of the greatest 
days between Manassas and Shiloh, in the midst of a 
two-sided carnage: “Yes, General, hard hit, but please 
don’t put us out of action.” 

XXXIV 

A FREE-GIFT BAZAAR 

Again it was February. The flag of Louisiana whose 
lone star and red and yellow stripes still hovered 
benignly over the Ionic marble porch of the city hall, 
was a year old. A new general, young and active, was 
in command of all the city’s forces, which again on the 
great Twenty-second paraded. Feebly, however; see 
letters to Irby and Mandeville under Brodnax in Ten- 
nessee, or to Kincaid’s Battery and its commander in 
Virginia. For a third time the regimental standards 
were of a new sort. They were the battle-flag now. 
Its need had been learned at Manassas; eleven stars on 
St. Andrew’s Cross, a field blood red, and the cross span- 
ning all the field! 

Again marched Continentals, Chasseurs, and so on. 
:Yet not as before; all their ranks were of new men; 

| the too old, the too frail, the too young, they of helpless 
families, and the “ British subjects.” Natives of France 
made a whole separate “French Legion,” in red kepis, 
blue frocks, and trousers shaped like inverted tenpins, 
as though New Orleans were Paris itself. The whole 
aspect of things was alert, anxious, spent. 

*75 


Kincaid’s Battery 

But it was only now this spent look had come. Until 
lately you might have seen entire brigades of stout- 
hearted men in. camps near by: Camps Benjamin, 
Walker, Pulaski and, up in the low pine hills of Tangi- 
pahoa, Camp Moore. From Camp Lewis alone, in 
November, on that plain where Kincaid’s Battery had 
drilled before it was Kincaid’s, the Bienville, Crescent 
City and many similar “ Guards,” Miles’ Artillery, the 
Orleans Light Horse, the Orleans Howitzers, the 
Orleans Guards, the Tirailleurs d’ Orleans, etc., had 
passed in front of Governor Moore and half a dozen 
generals, twenty-four thousand strong. 

Now these were mostly gone — to Bragg — to Price — 
to Lee and Joe Johnston, or to Albert Sidney Johnston 
and Beauregard. For the foe swarmed there, refusing 
to stay “hurled back.” True he was here also, and not 
merely by scores as battle captives, but alarmingly near, 
in arms and by thousands. Terrible Ship Island, occu- 
pied by the boys in gray and fortified, anathematized 
for its horrid isolation and torrid sands, had at length 
been evacuated, and on New Year’s Day twenty-four 
of the enemy’s ships were there disembarking blue-coats 
on its gleaming white dunes. Fair Carrollton was 
fortified (on those lines laid out by Hilary), and down 
at Camp Callender the siege-guns were manned by new 
cannoneers; persistently and indolently new and with- 
out field-pieces or brass music or carriage company. 

The spent look was still gallant, but under it was a 
feeling of having awfully miscalculated: flour twelve 
dollars a barrel and soon to be twenty. With news in 
abundance the papers had ceased their evening issues, 
so scarce was paper, and morning editions told of 
176 


A Free-Gift Bazaar 

Atlantic seaports lost, of Johnston’s retreat from Ken- 
tucky, the fall of Fort Donelson with its fifteen thousand 
men, the evacuation of Columbus (one of the Mississippi 
River’s “ Gibraltars”) and of Nashville, which had 
come so near being Dixie’s capital. And yet the news- 
papers — 

“ ‘ We see no cause for despondency,’ ” read Constance 
at the late breakfast table — “oh, Miranda, don’t you 
see that with that spirit we can never be subjugated?” 
She flourished the brave pages, for which Anna vainly 
reached. 

“Yes!” said Anna, “but find the report of the Ba- 
zaar!” — while Constance read on: “‘Reverses, instead 
of disheartening, have aroused our people to the highest 
pitch of animation, and their resolution to conquer is 
invincible.’ ” 

“Oh, how true! and ah, dearie!” — she pressed her 
sister’s hand amid the silver and porcelain on the old 
mahogany — “that news (some item read earlier, about 
the battery), why, Miranda, just that is a sign of im- 
pending victory! Straws tell! and Kincaid’s Battery 
is the ” 

“Biggest straw in Dixie!” jeered Anna, grasping the 
paper, which Constance half yielded with her eye still 
skimming its columns. 

“Here it is!” cried both, and rose together. 

“‘Final Figures of the St. Louis Hotel Free-Gift 
Lottery and Bazaar’ !” called Constance, while Anna’s 
eyes flew over the lines. 

“What are they?” exclaimed Miranda. 

“Oh, come and see! Just think, Nan: last May, in 
Odd-Fellows’ Hall, how proud we were of barely thir- 

*77 


Kincaid’s Battery 

teen thousand, and here are sixty-eight thousand dol- 
lars!” 

Anna pointed Miranda to a line, and Miranda, with 
their cheeks together, read out: “‘Is there no end to 
the liberality of the Crescent City?’” 

“No-o!” cried gesturing Constance, “not while one 
house stands on another! Why, ’Randa, though every 
hall and hotel from here to Carrollton ” 

Anna beamingly laid her fingers on the lips of the 
enthusiast: “Con! — Miranda ! — we can have a bazaar 
right in this house ! Every friend we’ve got, and every 
friend of the bat 9 — Oh, come in, Flora Valcour ! you’re 
just in the nick o’ time — a second Kirby Smith at 
Manassas!” 

Thus came the free-gift lottery and bazaar of Cal- 
lender House. For her own worth as well as to enlist 
certain valuable folk from Mobile, Flora was, there and 
then — in caucus, as it were — nominated chairman of 
everything. “Oh, no, no, no!” — “Oh, yes, yes, yes!” 
— she “yielded at last to overpowering numbers.” 

But between this first rapturous inception and an 
all-forenoon argumentation on its when, who, how, 
what, and for what, other matters claimed notice. 
Further news from Charlie! How was his wound? 
What ! a letter from his own hand — with full account of 
— what was this one? not a pitched battle, but ?” 

“Anyhow a victory!” cried Constance. 

“You know, Flora, don’t you,” asked Miranda, 
“that the battery’s ordered away across to Tennessee?” 

Flora was genuinely surprised. 

“Yes,” put in Constance, “to rejoin Beauregard— 
and Brodnax!” 


i 7 8 


A Free-Gift Bazaar 

Flora turned to Anna: “You have that by letter?” 

“No!” was the too eager reply, “It’s here in the 
morning paper.” They read the item. The visitor 
flashed as she dropped the sheet. * 

“Now I see!” she sorely cried, and tapped Charlie’s 
folded letter. “My God! Anna, wounded like that, 
Hilary Kincaid is letting my brother go with them!” 

“Oh-h-h!” exclaimed the other two, “but — my dear! 
if he’s so much better that he can be allowed ” 

“Allowed! — and in those box-car’! — and with that 
snow — rain — gangrene — lockjaw — my God ! And when 
’twas already arrange ’ to bring him home!” 

Slow Callenders! not to notice the word “bring” in 
place of “send”: “Ah, good, Flora! ah, fine! You’ll 
see! The dear boy’s coming that far with the battery 
only on his way home to us!” 

“H-m-m!” Flora nodded in sore irony, but then 
smiled with recovered poise: “From Tennessee who 
will bring him — before they have firs’ fight another 
battle? — and he — my brother?” — her smile grew 
droll. 

“Your brother sure to be in it!” gasped Anna. The 
Callenders looked heart-wrung, but Flora smiled on as 
she thought what comfort it would be to give each of 
them some life-long disfigurement. 

Suddenly Constance cheered up: “Flora, I’ve 
guessed something! Yes, I’ve guessed who was in- 
tending — and, maybe, still intends — to bring him!” 

Flora turned prettily to Anna: “Have you?” 

Quite as prettily Anna laughed. “Connie does the 
guessing for the family,” she said. 

Flora sparkled : “ But don’t you know — perchanze ? ” 
179 


Kincaid’s Battery 

Anna laughed again and blushed to the throat as she 
retorted, “What has that to do with our bazaar?” 

It had much to do with it. 


XXXV 

THE “SISTERS OF KINCAID’S BATTERY” 

A week or two ran by, and now again it was March. 
Never an earlier twelvemonth had the women of New 
Orleans — nor of any town or time — the gentlewomen — 
spent in more unselfish or arduous toil. 

At any rate so were flutteringly construed the crisp 
declarations of our pale friend of old, Doctor Sevier, as 
in Callender House he stood (with Anna seated half 
behind him as near as flounced crinoline would allow) 
beside a small table whose fragile beauty shared with 
hers the enthralled contemplation of every member of 
a numerous flock that nevertheless hung upon the 
Doctor’s words; such a knack have women of giving 
their undivided attention to several things at once. 
Flora was getting her share. 

This, he said, was a women’s — a gentlewomen’s — 
war. 

“ Ah ! ” A stir of assent ran through all the gathering. 
The long married, the newly wed, the affianced, the 
suspected, the debutantes, the post-marriageable, every 
one approved. Yes, a gentlewomen’s war — for the 
salvation of society! 

Hardly had this utterance thrilled round, however, 
when the speaker fell into an error which compelled 
Anna softly to interrupt, her amazed eyes and protesting 
180 


The “Sisters of Kincaid’s Battery” 

smile causing a general hum of amusement and quick- 
ening of fans. “No-o!” she whispered to him, “she 
was not chairman of the L. S. C. A., but only one small 
secretary of that vast body, and chairman pro tern. — 
nothing more! — of this mere contingent of it, these 
“Sisters of Kincaid’s Battery.” 

Pro tern., nothing more! But that is how — silly lit- 
tle Victorine leading the hue and cry which suddenly 
overwhelmed all counter-suggestion as a levee crevasse 
sweeps away sand-bags — that is how the permanent 
and combined chairmanship of Sisters and Bazaar 
came to be forcibly thrust upon Anna instead of Flora. 

Experienced after Odd-Fellow’ Hall and St. Louis 
Hotel, the ladies were able to take up this affair as 
experts. Especially they had learned how to use 
men; to make them as handy as — “as hairpins,” 
prompted Miranda, to whom Anna had whispered it; 
and of men they needed all they could rally, to catch 
the first impact of the vast and chaotic miscellany of 
things which would be poured into their laps, so to 
speak, and upon their heads : bronzes, cutlery, blankets, 
watches, thousands of brick (orders on the brick-yards 
for them, that is), engravings, pianos, paintings, books, 
cosmetics, marbles, building lots (their titles), laces, 
porcelain, glass, alabaster, bales of cotton, big bank 
checks, hair flowers, barouches, bonds, shawls, carvings, 
shell-work boxes, jewellery, silks, ancestral relics, curios 
from half round the world, wax fruits, tapestries, and 
loose sapphires, diamonds, rubies, and pearls. The 
Callenders and Valcours could see, in fancy, all the 
first chaos of it and all the fair creation that was to arise 
from it. 


181 


Kincaid’s Battery 

What joy of planning! The grove should be ruddy 
with pine-knot flares perched high, and be full of lumi- 
nous tents stocked with stuffs for sale at the most patriotic 
prices by Zingaras, Fatimas, and Scheherazades. All 
the walks of the garden would be canopied with bunting 
and gemmed with candles blinking like the fireflies 
round that bower of roses by Bendermere’s stream. 
The verandas would be enclosed in canvas and be rich 
in wares, textiles, and works of art. Armed sentries 
from that splendid command, the Crescent Regiment, 
would be everywhere in the paved and latticed basement 
(gorged with wealth), and throughout the first and 
second floors. The centrepiece in the arrangement of 
the double drawing-rooms would be a great field-piece, 
one of Hilary’s casting, on its carriage, bright as gold, 
and flanked with stacks of muskets. The leading item 
in the hall would be an allegorical painting — by a famous 
Creole artist of nearly sixty years earlier — Louisiana 
Refusing to Enter the Union. Glass cases borrowed of 
merchants, milliners and apothecaries would receive 
the carefully classified smaller gifts of rare value, and a 
committee of goldsmiths, art critics, and auctioneers, 
would set their prices. If one of those torrential hurri- 
canes — however, there came none. 

How much, now, could they hope to clear? Well, 
the women of Alabama, to build a gun-boat, had raised 
two hundred thousand dollars, and 

“They will ’ave to raise mo’,” twittered Madame 
Valcour, “if New Orleans fall’.” 

“She will not fall,” remarked Anna from the chair, 
and there was great applause, as great as lace mitts 
could make. 


182 


Thunder-Cloud and Sunburst 

Speaking of that smaller stronghold, Flora had a 
capital suggestion: Let this enterprise be named “for 
the common defence. ,, Then, in the barely conceivable 
event of the city’s fall, should the proceeds still be in 
women’s hands — and it might be best to keep them so 
— let them go to the defence of Mobile! 

Another idea — Miranda’s and Victorine’s — quite as 
gladly accepted, and they two elected to carry it out — 
was, to compile, from everybody’s letters, a history of 
the battery, to be sold at the bazaar. The large price 
per copy which that w r ork commanded was small com- 
pared with what it would bring now. 

XXXVI 

THUNDER-CLOUD AND SUNBURST 

Could they have known half the toil, care, and trial 
the preparation of this Bazaar was to cost their friends, 
apologized the Callenders as it neared completion, they 
would never have dared propose it. 

But the smiling reply was Spartan: “Oh! what are 
such trifles when we think how our own fathers, hus- 
bands, and brothers have suffered — even in victory!” 
The “Sisters” were still living on last summer’s glory, 
and only by such indirections alluded to defeats. 

Anna smiled as brightly as any, while through her 
mind flitted spectral visions of the secondary and so 
needless carnage in those awful field-hospitals behind 
the battles, and of the storms so likely to follow the 
fights, when the midnight rain came down in sheets on 
the wounded still lying among the dead. On all the 
183 


Kincaid’s Battery 

teeming, bleeding front no father, husband, or brother 
was hers, but amid the multitudinous exploits and 
agonies her thoughts were ever on him who, by no tie 
but the heart’s, had in the past year grown to be father, 
mother, sister, and brother to the superb hundred whom 
she so tenderly knew, who so worshipingly knew her, 
and still whose lives, at every chance, he was hurling at 
the foe as stones from a sling. 

“ After all, in these terrible time’,” remarked Miss 
Valcour in committee of the whole — last session before 
the public opening — “any toil, even look’ at selfishly, is 
better than to be idle.” 

“As if you ever looked at anything selfishly!” said a 
matron, and there was a patter of hands. 

“Or as if she were ever in danger of being idle!” 
fondly put in a young battery sister. 

As these two rattled and crashed homeward in a 
deafening omnibus they shouted further comments to 
each other on this same subject. It was strange, they 
agreed, to see Miss Valcour, right through the midst of 
these terrible times, grow daily handsomer. Concerning 
Anna, they were of two opinions. The matron thought 
that at moments Anna seemed to have aged three years 
in one, while to the girl it appeared that her beauty — 
Anna’s — had actually increased; taken a deeper tone, 
“or something.” This huge bazaar business, they 
screamed, was something a girl like Anna should never 
have been allowed to undertake. 

“And yet,” said the matron on second thought, “it 
may really have helped her to bear up.” 

“Against what?” 

“Oh, — all our general disturbance and distress, but 
184 


Thunder-Cloud and Sunburst 

the battery’s in particular. You know its very guns 
are, as we may say, hers, and everything that happens 
around them, or to any one who belongs to them in 
field, camp, or hospital, happens, in her feeling, to her.” 

The girl interrupted with a knowing touch: “You 
realize there’s something else, don’t you?” 

Her companion showed pain: “Yes, but — I hoped 
you hadn’t heard of it. I can’t bear to talk about it. 
I know how common it is for men and girls to trifle with 
each other, but for such as he — who had the faith of all 
of us, yes, and of all his men, that he wasn’t as other 
men are — for Hilary Kincaid to dawdle with Anna — 
with Anna Callender ” 

“Oh l” broke in the girl, a hot blush betraying her 
own heart, “I don’t think you’ve got the thing right 
at all. Why, it’s Anna who’s making the trouble! 
The dawdling is all hers! Oh, I have it from the best 
authority, though I’m not at liberty ” 

“My dear girl, you’ve been misled. The fault is all 
his. I know it from one who can’t be mistaken.” 

The damsel blushed worse. “Well, at any rate,” she 
said, “the case doesn’t in any slightest way involve 
Miss Valcour.” 

“Oh, I know that!” was the cocksure reply as they 
alighted in Canal Street to take an uptown mule-car. 

Could Madame and Flora have overheard, how they 
would have smiled to each other. 

With now a wary forward step and now a long pause, 
and now another short step and another pause, Hilary, 
in his letters to Anna, despite Flora’s often successful 
contrivings, had ventured back toward that understand- 
ing for which the souls of both were starving, until at 

i85 


Kincaid’s Battery 

length he had sent one which seemed, itself, to kneel, 
for him, at her feet — would have seemed, had it not 
miscarried. But, by no one’s craft, merely through the 
“terribleness” of the times, it had gone forever astray. 
When, not knowing this, he despatched another, this 
latter had promptly arrived, but its unintelligible allu- 
sions to lines in the lost forerunner were unpardonable 
for lack of that forerunner’s light, and it contained 
especially one remark — trivial enough — which, because 
written in the irrepressible facetiousness so inborn in 
him, but taken, alas! in the ineradicable earnest so 
natural to her, had compelled her to reply in words 
which made her as they went, and him as they smote 
him, seem truly to have “aged three years in one.” 
Yet hardly had they left her before you would have 
said she had recovered the whole three years and a 
fraction over, on finding a postscript, till then most 
unaccountably overlooked, which said that its writer 
had at that moment been ordered (as soon as he could 
accomplish this and that and so and so) to hasten 
home to recruit the battery with men of his own choice, 
and incidentally to bring the wounded Charlie with him. 
Such godsends raise the spring-tides of praise and 
human kindness in us, and it was on the very next 
morning, after finding that postscript, that there 
had come to Anna her splendid first thought of the 
Bazaar. 

And now behold it, a visible reality! Unlighted as 
yet, unpeopled, but gorgeous, multiform, sentinelled, 
and ready, it needed but the touch of the taper to set 
forth all the glories of art and wealth tenfolded by self- 
sacrifice for a hallowed cause. Here was the Bazaar, 
1 86 


Thunder-Cloud and Sunburst 

:md yonder, far away on the southern border of Tennes- 
see, its wasted ranks still spruce in their tatters, the 
battery; iron-hearted Bartleson in command; its six 
yellow daughters of destruction a trifle black in the lips, 
but bright on the cheeks and virgins all; Charlie on the 
roster though not in sight, the silken-satin standard well 
in view, rent and pierced, but showing seven red days 
of valor legended on its folds, and with that white- 
moustached old centaur, Maxime, still upholding it in 
action and review. 

Intermediate, there, yonder, and here, from the 
farthest Mississippi State line clear down to New 
Orleans, were the camps of instruction, emptying 
themselves northward, pouring forth infantry, cavalry, 
artillery by every train that could be put upon the worn- 
out rails and by every main-travelled wagon road. But 
homeward-bound Charlie and his captain, where were 
they ? Irby knew. 

Flora, we have seen, had been willing, eager, for 
them to come — to arrive; not because Charlie, but 
because his captain, was one of the two. But Irby, 
never sure of her, and forever jealous of the ladies’ 
man, had contrived, in a dull way, to detain the home- 
comers in mid-journey, with telegraphic orders to see 
here a commandant and there a factory of arms and 
hurry men and munitions to the front. So he killed 
time and tortured hope for several hearts, and that 
was a comfort in itself. 

However, here was the Bazaar. After all, its sentinels 
were not of the Crescent Regiment, for the same grave 
reason which postponed the opening until to-morrow; 
the fact that to-day that last flower of the city’s young 

187 


Kincaid’s Battery 

high-life was leaving for the fields of war, as Kincaid’s 
Battery had left in the previous spring. Yet, oh, how 
differently! Again up St. Charles Street and down 
Calliope the bands played, the fifes squealed; once 
more the old men marched ahead, opened ranks, let the 
serried youngsters through and waved and hurrahed 
and kissed and wept; but all in a new manner, far 
more poignant than the earlier. God only knew what 
was to happen now, to those who went or to those who 
stayed, or where or how any two of them should ever 
meet again. The Callenders, as before, were there. 
Anna had come definitely resolved to give one particu- 
lar beardless Dick Smith a rousing kiss, purely to nullify 
that guilty one of last year. But when the time came 
she could not, the older one had made it impossible; 
and when the returning bands broke out — 

“Charlie is my darling! my darling! my darling!” 

and the tears came dripping from under Connie’s veil 
and Victorine’s and Miranda’s and presently her own, 
she was glad of the failure. 

As they were driving homeward across Canal Street, 
she noted, out beyond the Free Market, a steamboat 
softly picking its way in to the levee. Some coal- 
barges were there, she remembered, lading with pitch- 
pine and destined as fire-ships, by that naval lieutenant 
of the despatch-boat whom we know, against the Fed- 
eral fleet lying at the head of the passes. 

The coachman named the steamer to Constance: 
“Yass, ’m, de ole Gen’al Quitman ; dass her.” 

“From Vicksburg and the Bends!” cried the in- 
quirer. “Why, who knows but Charlie Val — ?” 

1 88 


“I’m Come Hame, My Love” 

With both hands she clutched Miranda and Victorine, 
and brightened upon Anna. 

“And Flora not with us!” was the common lament. 


XXXVII 

“till he said, Tm come hame, my love”’ 

How absurdly poor the chance! Yet they bade the 
old coachman turn that way, and indeed the facts were 
better than the hope of any one of them. Charlie, 
very gaunt and battered, but all the more enamored of 
himself therefor and for the new chevrons of a gun 
corporal on his dingy sleeve, was actually aboard that 
boat. In one of the small knots of passengers on her 
boiler deck he was modestly companioning with a cap- 
tain of infantry and two of staff, while they now ex- 
changed merry anecdotes of the awful retreat out of 
Tennessee into Mississippi, now grimly damned this or 
that bad strategy, futile destruction, or horrible suffer- 
ing, now re-discussed the comical chances of a bet of 
General Brodnax’s, still pending, and now, with the 
crowd, moved downstairs to the freight deck as the 
boat began to nose the wharf. 

Meanwhile the Callenders’ carriage had made easy 
speed. Emerging by the Free Market, it met an open 
hack carrying six men. At the moment every one was 
cringing in a squall of dust, but as well as could be 
seen these six were the driver, a colored servant at his 
side, an artillery corporal, and three officers. Some 
army wagons hauling pine-knots to the fire-fleet com- 
pelled both carriages to check up. Thereupon, the 
189 


Kincaid’s Battery 

gust passing and Victorine getting a better glance at the 
men, she tossed both hands, gave a stifled cry and 
began to laugh aloud. 

“ Charlie !” cried Anna. “ Steve !” cried Constance. 

“And Captain Irby!’’ remarked Miranda. 

The infantry captain, a transient steamboat acquaint- 
ance, used often afterward to say that he never saw 
anything prettier than those four wildly gladdened 
ladies unveiling in the shade of their parasols. I 
doubt if he ever did. He talked with Anna, who gave 
him so sweet an attention that he never suspected she 
was ravenously taking in every word the others dropped 
behind her. 

“But where he is, that Captain Kincaid?” asked 
Victorine of Charlie a second time. 

“Well, really,” stammered the boy at last, “we — we 
can’t say, just now, where he is.” 

(“He’s taken prisoner!” wailed Anna’s heart while 
she let the infantry captain tell her that hacks, in Nash- 
ville on the Sunday after Donelson, were twenty-five 
dollars an hour.) 

“He means,” she heard Mandeville put in, “he 
means — Charlie — only that we muz not tell. ‘Tis a 
sicret.” 

“You’ve sent him into the enemy’s lines!” cried Con- 
stance to Irby in one of her intuitions. 

“We?” responded the grave Irby, “No, not we.” 

“Captain Mandeville,” exclaimed Victorine, “us, 
you don’t need to tell us some white lies.” 

The Creole shrugged: “We are telling you only the 
whitess we can!” 

(“Yes,” the infantry captain said, “with Memphis 
190 


“I’m Come Hame, My Love” 

we should lose the largest factory of cartridges in the 
Confederacy.”) 

But this was no place for parleying. So while the 
man next the hack-driver, ordered by Mandeville and 
laden with travelling-bags, climbed to a seat by the 
Callenders’ coachman the aide-de-camp crowded in 
between Constance and Victorine, the equipage turned 
from the remaining soldiers, and off the ladies spun 
for home, Anna and Miranda riding backward to have 
the returned warrior next his doting wife. Victorine 
was dropped on the way at the gate of her cottage. 
When the others reached the wide outer stair of their 
own veranda, and the coachman’s companion had 
sprung down and opened the carriage, Mandeville 
was still telling of Mandeville, and no gentle hearer 
had found any chance to ask further about that missing 
one of whom the silentest was famishing to know what- 
ever — good or evil — there was to tell. Was Steve avoid- 
ing their inquiries ? wondered Anna. 

Up the steps went first the married pair, the wife 
lost in the hero, the hero in himself. Was he, truly? 
thought Anna, or was he only trying, kindly, to appear 
so ? The ever-smiling Miranda followed. A step 
within the house Mandeville, with eyes absurdly aflame, 
startled first his wife by clutching her arm, and then 
Miranda by beckoning them into a door at their right, 
past unheeded treasures of the Bazaar, and to a front 
window. Yet through its blinds they could discover 
only what they had just left; the carriage, with Anna 
still in it, the garden, the grove, an armed soldier on 
guard at the river gate, another at the foot of the steps, 
a third here at the top. 


Kincaid’s Battery 

It was good to Anna to rest her head an instant on 
the cushioning behind it and close her eyes. With his 
rag of a hat on the ground and his head tightly wrapped 
in the familiar Madras kerchief of the slave deck-hand, 
the attendant at the carriage side reverently awaited the 
relifting of her lids. The old coachman glanced back 
on her. 

“Missy?” he tenderly ventured. But the lids still 
drooped, though she rose. 

“Watch out fo’ de step,” said the nearer man. His 
tone was even more musically gentle than the other’s, 
yet her eyes instantly opened into his and she started 
so visibly that her foot half missed and she had to 
catch his saving hand. 

“Stiddy! stiddy!” He slowly let the cold, slim fingers 
out of his as she started on, but she swayed again and 
he sprang and retook them. For half a breath she 
stared at him like a wild bird shot, glanced at the 
sentinels, below, above, and then pressed up the stair. 

Constance, behind the shutters, wept. “ Go away,” 
she pleaded to her husband, “oh, go away!” but pushed 
him without effect and peered down again. “He’s 
won!” she exclaimed in soft ecstasy, “he’s won at last!” 

“Yes, he’s win!” hoarsely whispered the aide-de- 
camp. “ He’s win the bet ! ” 

Constance flashed indignantly: “What has he bet?” 

“ Bet. ‘ He has bet three-ee general ’ he’ll pazz down 
Canal Street and through the middl’ of the city, un- 
reco’nize! And now he’s done it, they’ll let him do the 
rest!” From his Creole eyes the enthusiast blazed a 
complete argument, that an educated commander, so 
disguised and traversing an enemy’s camp, can be 
192 


“I’m Come Hame, My Love” 

worth a hundred of the common run who go by the 
hard name of spy, and may decide the fortunes of a 
whole campaign: “They’ll let him! and he’ll get the 
prom-otion ! ” 

“Ho-oh!” breathed the two women, “he’s getting all 
the promotion he wants, right now!” The three heard 
Anna pass into the front drawing-room across the hall, 
the carriage move off anfl the disguised man enter the 
hall and set down the travelling-bags. They stole away 
through the library and up a rear stair. 

It was not yet late enough to set guards within the 
house. No soul was in the drawing-rooms. In the front 
one, on its big wheels between two stacks of bayoneted 
rifles, beneath a splendor of flags and surrounded by 
innumerable costly offerings, rested as mutely as a 
seated idol that superior engine of death and woe, the 
great brass gun. Anna stole to it, sunk on her knees, 
crossed her trembling arms about its neck and rested 
her brow on its face. 

She heard the tread in the hall, quaked to rise and 
flee, and yet could not move. It came upon the 
threshold and paused. “Anna,” said the voice that 
had set her heart on fire across the carriage step. She 
sprang up, faced round, clutched the great gun, and 
stood staring. Her follower was still in slave garb, 
but now for the first time he revealed his full stature. 
His black locks were free and the “Madras” dropped 
from his fingers to the floor. He advanced a pace or 
two. 

“Anna,” he said again, “Anna Callender,” — he 
came another step — “I’ve come back, Anna, to— 
to — ” he drew a little nearer. She gripped the gun. 

193 


Kincaid’s Battery 

He lighted up drolly: ‘‘Don’t you know what I’ve 
come for? I didn’t know, myself, till just now, or I 
shouldn’t have come in this rig, though many a better 
man’s in worse these days. I didn’t know — because — I 
couldn’t hope. I’ve come — ” he stole close — his arms 
began to lift — she straightened to her full height, but 
helplessly relaxed as he smiled down upon it. 

“I’ve come not just to get your promise, Anna Cal- 
lender, but to muster you in; to marry you.” 

She flinched behind the gun’s muzzle in resentful 
affright. He lowered his palms in appeal to her wis- 
dom. “It’s the right thing, Anna, the only safe way! 
I’ve known it was, ever since Steve Mandeville’s wed- 
ding. Oh! it takes a colossal assurance to talk to you 
so, Anna Callender, but I’ve got the colossal assurance . 
I’ve got that, beloved, and you’ve got all the rest — my 
heart — my soul — my life. Give me yours.” 

Anna had shrunk in against the farther wheel, but 
now rallied and moved a step forward. “ Let me pass,” 
she begged. “Give me a few moments to myself. 
You can wait here. I’ll come back.” 

He made room. She moved by. But hardly had 
she passed when a soft word stopped her. She turned 
inquiringly and the next instant — Heaven only knows 
if first on his impulse or on hers — she was in his arms, 
half stifled on his breast, and hanging madly from his 
neck while his kisses fell upon her brow — temples — 
eyes — and rested on her lips. 

Flora sat reading a note just come from that same 
“A. C.” Her brother had gone to call on Victorine. 
Irby had just bade the reader good-by, to return soon 

I 94 


“I’m Come Hame, My Love” 

and go with her to Callender House to see the Bazaar 
Madame Valcour turned from a window with a tart 
inquiry: 

“And all you had to do was to say yes to him?” 

“That would have been much,” absently replied the 
reader, turning a page. 

“’Twould have been little! — to make him rich! — 
and us also!” 

“Not us,” said the abstracted girl; “me.” Some- 
thing in the missive caused her brows to knit. 

“And still you trifle!” nagged the grandam, “while 
I starve! And while at any instant may arrive — 
humph — that other fool.” 

Even this did not draw the reader’s glance. “No.” 
she responded. “ He cannot. Irby and Charlie lied to 
us. He is already here.” She was re-reading. 

The grandmother stared, tossed a hand and moved 
across the floor. As she passed near the girl’s slippered 
foot it darted out, tripped her and would have sent 
her headlong, but she caught by the lamp table. Flora 
smiled with a strange whiteness round the lips. Mad- 
ame righted the shaken lamp, quietly asking, “Did 
you do that — h-m-m — for hate of the lady, or, eh, the 
ladies’ man?” 

“The latter,” said the reabsorbed girl. 

“Strange,” sighed the other, “how we can have — at 
the same time — for the same one — both feelings.” 

But Flora’s ears were closed. “Well,” she audibly 
mused, “he’ll get a recall.” 

“ Even if it must be forged ? ” twittered the dame. 


195 


Kincaid’s Battery 

xxxvm 

anna’s old jewels 

A reporters’ heaven, the Bazaar. So on its open- 
ing night Hilary named it to Flora. 

“A faerye realm,” the scribes themselves itemed it; 
“myriad lights — broad staircases gracef’y asc’d’g — 
ravish’g perfumes — met our gaze — garlandries of 
laurel and magn’a — prom’d’g from room to room — 
met our gaze — directed by masters of cerem’y in 
Conf’te G’d’s unif’m — here tum’g to the right — fair 
women and brave men — carried thither by the dense 
throng — music with its volup’s swell — met our gaze 
— again descend’g — arriv’g at din’g-hall — new scene of 
ench’t bursts — refr’t tables — enarched with ev’gr’s and 
decked with labarums and burgees — thence your way 
lies through — costly volumes and shimm’g bijoutries 
— met our gaze*” 

It was Kincaid who saw their laborious office in this 
flippant light, and so presented it to Anna that she 
laughed till she wept; laughing was now so easy. 
But when they saw one of the pencillers writing awk- 
wardly with his left hand, aided by half a right arm in 
a pinned-up sleeve, her mirth k had a sudden check. 
Yet presently it became a proud thrill, as the poor boy 
glowed with delight while Hilary stood and talked with 
him of the fearful Virginia day on which that ruin had 
befallen him at Hilary’s own side in Kincaid’s Battery, 
and then brought him to converse with her. This inci- 
dent may account for the fervor with which a next 
morning’s report extolled the wonders of the “fair 
. 196 


Anna’s Old Jewels 

chairman’s” administrative skill and the matchless and 
most opportune executive supervision of Captain Hilary 
Kincaid. Flora read it with interest. 

With interest of a different kind she read in a later 
issue another passage, handed her by the grandmother 
with the remark, “ to warn you, my dear.” The matter 
was a frothy bit of tragical romancing, purporting to 
have been gathered from two detectives out of their 
own experience of a year or so before, about a gift made 
to the Bazaar by Captain Kincaid, which had— “met 
our gaze jealously guarded under glass amid a brilliant 
collection of reliques, jewels, and bric-a-brac; a large, 
evil-looking knife still caked with the mud of the deadly 
affray, but bearing legibly in Italian on its blade the 
inscription, ‘He who gets me in his body never need 
take a medicine,’ and with a hilt and scabbard en- 
crusted with gems.” 

Now, one of the things that made Madame Valcour 
good company among gentlewomen was her authorita- 
tive knowledge of precious stones. So when Flora 
finished reading and looked up, and the grandmother 
faintly smiled and shook her head, both understood. 

“Paste?” 

“Mostly.” 

“And the rest — not worth ?” 

“Your stealing,” simpered the connoisseur, and, 
reading, herself, added meditatively, “I should hate 
anyhow, for you to have that thing. The devil would 
be always at your ear.” 

“ Whispering — what ? ” 

The grandmother shrugged: “That depends. I 
look to see you rise, yet, to some crime of dignity; some- 
197 


Kincaid’s Battery 

thing really tragic and Italian. Whereas at present — ” 
she pursed her lips and shrugged aga : n. 

The girl blandly laughed: “You venerable in- 
grate !” 

At the Bazaar that evening, when Charlie and grand- 
ma and the crowd were gone, Flora handled the 
unlovely curiosity. She and Irby had seen Hilary and 
Anna and the Hyde & Goodrich man on guard just 
there draw near the glass case where it lay “like a 
snake on a log,” as Charlie had said, take it in their 
hands and talk of it. The jeweller was expressing con- 
fidentially a belief that it had once been set with real 
stones, and Hilary was privately having a sudden 
happy thought, when Flora and Adolphe came up 
only in time to hear the goldsmith’s statement of its 
present poor value. 

“But surely,” said Kincaid, “this old jewellery lying 
all about it here ” 

“That? that’s the costliest gift in the Bazaar!” 

Irby inquired whose it was, Anna called it anony- 
mous, and Flora, divining that the giver was Anna, felt 
herself outrageously robbed. As the knife was being 
laid back in place she recalled, with odd interest, her 
grandmother’s mention of the devil, and remembered a 
time or two when for a moment she had keenly longed 
for some such bit of steel; something much more 
slender, maybe, and better fitting a dainty hand, but 
quite as long and sharp. A wave from this thought 
may have prompted Anna’s request that the thing be 
brought forth again and Flora allowed to finger it; but 
while this was being done Flora’s main concern was to 
note how the jeweller worked the hidden spring by 
198 


Anna’s Old Jewels 

which he opened the glass case. As she finally gave up 
the weapon: “Thank you,” she sweetly said to both 
Anna and Hilary, but with a meaning reserved to 
herself. 

You may remember how once she had gone feeling 
and prying along the fair woodwork of these rooms for 
any secret of construction it might hold. Lately, when 
the house began to fill with secretable things of large 
money value, she had done this again, and this time, in 
one side of a deep chimney-breast, had actually found 
a most innocent-looking panel which she fancied to be 
kept from sliding only by its paint. Now while she 
said her sweet thanks to Anna and Hilary she could 
almost believe in fairies, the panel was so near the store 
of old jewels. With the knife she might free the panel, 
and behind the panel hide the jewels till their scent 
grew cold, to make them her bank account when all 
the banks should be broken, let the city fall or stand. 
No one need ever notice, so many were parting with 
their gems perforce, so many buying them as a form 
of asset convenient for flight. So good-night, old 
dagger and jewels; see you again, but don’t overdo 
your limited importance. Of the weapon Flora had 
further learned that it was given not to the Bazaar but 
to Anna, and of the jewels that they were not in that 
lottery of everything, with which the affair was to end 
and the proceeds of whose tickets were pouring in upon 
Anna, acting treasurer, the treasurer being ill. 

Tormentingly in Hilary’s way was this Lottery and 
Bazaar. Even from Anna, sometimes especially from 
Anna, he could not understanc why certain things must 
not be told or certain things could not be done until 
199 


Kincaid’s Battery 

this Bazaar — etc. Why, at any hour he might be 
recalled! Yes, Anna saw that — through very moist 
eyes. True, also, she admitted, Beauregard and Johns- 
ton might fail to hold off Buell and Grant; and true, as 
well, New Orleans could fall, and might be sacked. It 
was while confessing this that with eyes down and 
bosom heaving she accepted the old Italian knife. 
Certainly unless the pooh-poohing Mandeville was 
wrong, who declared the forts down the river impreg- 
nable and Beauregard, on the Tennessee, invincible, 
flight (into the Confederacy) was safest — but — the 
Bazaar first, flight afterward. “ We women,” she said, 
rising close before him with both hands in his, “must 
stand by our guns. We’ve no more right” — it was 
difficult to talk while he kissed her fingers and pressed 
her palms to his gray breast — “no more right — to be 
cowards — than you men.” 

Her touch brought back his lighter mood and he told 
the happy thought — project — which had come to him 
while they talked with the jeweller. He could himself 
“do the job,” he said, “roughly but well enough.” 
Anna smiled at the fanciful scheme. Yet — yes, its 
oddity was in its favor. So many such devices were 
succeeding, some of them to the vast advantage of the 
Southern cause. 

When Flora the next evening stole a passing glance 
at the ugly trinket in its place she was pleased to note 
how well it retained its soilure of clay. For she had 
that day used it to free the panel, behind which she had 
found a small recess so fitted to her want that she had 
only to replace panel an 1 tool and await some chance 
in the closing hours of the show. Pleased she was, too. 


200 


Tight Pinch 

to observe that the old jewels lay in a careless heap. 
Now to conceal all interest and to divert all eyes, even 
grandmama’s! Thus, however, night after night an 
odd fact eluded her: That Anna and her hero, always 
singly, and themselves careful to lure others away, 
glimpsed that disordered look of the gems and un- 
molested air of the knife with a content as purposeful as 
her own. Which fact meant, when came the final even- 
ing, that at last every sham jewel in the knife’s sheath 
had exchanged places with a real one from the loose 
heap, while, nestling between two layers of the sheath’s 
material, reposed, payable to bearer, a check on London 
for thousands of pounds sterling. Very proud was 
Anna of her lover’s tremendous versatility and crafts- 
manship. 


XXXIX 

TIGHT PINCH 

From Camp Viller£, close below small Camp Cal- 
lender, one more last regiment — Creoles — was to have 
gone that afternoon to the Jackson Railroad Station 
and take train to join their Creole Beauregard for the 
defence of their own New Orleans. 

More than a day’s and a night’s journey away was 
“Corinth,” the village around which he had gathered 
his forces, but every New Orleans man and boy among 
them knew, and every mother and sister here in New 
Orleans knew, that as much with those men and boys 
as with any one anywhere, lay the defence and deliver- 
ance of this dear Crescent City. With Grant swept 
back from the Tennessee, and the gunboats that 


201 


Kincaid’s Battery 

threatened Island Ten and Memphis sunk, blown up, 
or driven back into the Ohio, New Orleans, they be- 
lieved, could jeer at Farragut down at the Passes and at 
Butler out on horrid Ship Island. “And so can Mobile,” 
said the Callenders to the Valcours. 

“ The fortunes of our two cities are one ! ” cried Con- 
stance, and the smiling Valcours were inwardly glad to 
assent, believing New Orleans doomed, and remember- 
ing their Mobile home burned for the defence of the two 
cities of one fortune. 

However, the Camp Viller6 regiment had not got off, 
but would move at midnight. On the train with them 
Hilary was sending recruits to the battery, younger 
brothers of those who had gone the year before. He 
had expected to conduct, not send, them, but important 
work justified — as Anna told Flora — his lingering until 
his uncle should bid him come. Which bidding Irby 
might easily have incited, by telegraph, had Flora let 
him. But Flora’s heart was too hopelessly entangled 
to release Hilary even for the gain of separating him 
from Anna; and because it was so entangled (and with 
her power to plot caught in the tangle), she was learning 
to hate with a distemper of passion that awed even 
herself. 

“ But I must clear out mighty soon,” said Hilary that 
evening to Greenleaf, whose exchange he had procured 
at last and, rather rashly, was taking him to Callender 
House to say good-by. They talked of Anna. Green- 
leaf knew the paramount secret; had bravely given his 
friend a hand on it the day he was told. Now Hilary 
said he had been begging her again for practical steps, 
and the manly loser commended. 


202 


Tight Pinch 

“But think of that from me, Fred! who one year ago 
— you know how I talked — about Steve, for instance. 
Shame ! — how reckless war’s made us. Here we are, by 
millions, in a perpetual crash of victory and calamity, 
and yet — take me for an example — in spite of me my 
one devouring anxiety — that wakes me up in the night 
and gives me dreams in the day — is how to get her 
before this next battle get’s me. Yes, the instant I’m 
ordered I go, and if I’m not ordered soon I go anyhow. 
I wouldn’t have my boys” — etc. 

And still the prison-blanched Greenleaf approved. 
But the next revelation reddened his brow: Anna, 
Hilary said, had at last “ come round — knuckled down ! 
Yes, sir-ee, cav-ed in!” and this evening, after the 
Bazaar, to a few younger sisters of the battery whom 
she would ask to linger for a last waltz with their young 
heroes, she would announce her engagement and her 
purpose to be wed in a thrillingly short time. 

The two men found the Bazaar so amusingly col- 
lapsed that, as Hilary said, you could spell it with a 
small b. A stream of vehicles coming and going had 
about emptied the house and grounds. No sentries 
saluted, no music chimed. In the drawing-rooms the 
brass gun valiantly held its ground, but one or two 
domestics clearing litter from the floors seemed quite 
alone there, and some gay visitors who still tarried in 
the library across the hall were hardly enough to crowd 
it. “ Good,” said Hilary beside the field-piece. “You 
wait here and I’ll bring the Callenders as they can 
come.” 

But while he went for them whom should Greenleaf 
light upon around a corner of the panelled chimney- 
203 


Kincaid’s Battery 

breast but that secret lover of the Union and all its de- 
fenders, Mademoiselle Valcour. Her furtive cordiality 
was charming as she hurriedly gave and withdrew a 
hand in joy for his liberation. 

“Taking breath out of the social rapids ?” he softly 
inquired. 

“Ah, more! ’Tis from that deluge of ” 

He understood her emotional gesture. It meant that 
deluge of disloyalty — rebellion — there across the hall, 
and all through this turbulent city and land. But it 
meant, too, that they must not be seen to parley alone, 
and he had turned away, when Miranda, to Flora’s 
disgust, tripped in upon them with her nose in full 
wrinkle, archly surprised to see Flora here, and pro- 
posing to hale both into the general throng to applaud 
Anna’s forthcoming “proclamation!” 

Greenleaf de trop? Ah, nay! not if he could keep 
the old Greenleaf poise! and without words her merry 
nose added that his presence would only give happier 
point to what every one regarded as a great Confederate 
victory. At a subtle sign from Flora the hostess and he 
went, expecting her to follow. 

But Flora was in a perilous strait. Surprised by 
Hilary’s voice, with the panel open and the knife laid 
momentarily in the recess that both hands might bring 
the jewels from the case, she had just closed the opening 
with the dagger inside when Greenleaf confronted her. 
Now, in this last instant of opportunity at his and 
Miranda’s back, should she only replace the weapon or 
still dare the theft ? At any rate the panel must be re- 
opened. But when she would have slid it her dainty 
fingers failed, failed, failed until a cold damp came to 
204 


Tight Pinch 

her brow and she trembled. Yet saunter ingly she 
stepped to the show-case, glancing airily about. The 
servants had gone. She glided back, but turned to 
meet another footfall, possibly Kincaid’s, and felt her 
anger rise against her will as she confronted only the 
inadequate Irby. A sudden purpose filled her, and 
before he could speak: 

“Go!” she said, “telegraph your uncle! instantly!” 

“I’ve done so.” 

Her anger mutinied again: “Without consult’ — ! 
And since when?” 

“This morning.” 

She winced yet smiled : “ And still — your cousin — he 
’s receive’ no order?” Her fingers tingled to maim 
some one — this dolt — anybody! Her eyes sweetened. 

Irby spoke: “The order has come, but ” 

“ What ! you have not given it ? ” 

“Flora, it includes me! Ah, for one more evening 
with you I am risking ” 

Her look grew fond though she made a gesture 
of despair: “Oh, short-sighted! Go, give it him! 
Go!” 

Across the hall a prolonged carol of acclamation, 
confabulation, laughter, and cries of “Ah-r, indeed!” 
told that Anna’s word was out. “What difference,” 
Irby lingered to ask, “can an hour or two between 
trains ? ” 

But the throng was upon them. “We don’t know!” 
cried Flora. “Give it him! We don’t know /” and 
barely had time herself to force a fight laugh when here 
were Charlie and Victorine, Hilary, Anna, Miranda, 
Madame, Constance, Mandeville, and twenty others. 

205 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“Fred!” called Hilary. His roaming look found the 
gray detective: “Where’s Captain Greenleaf?” 

“ Gone.” 

“ With never a word of good-by ? Oh, bless my soul, 
he did say good-by!” There was a general laugh. 
“But this won’t do. It’s not safe for him ” 

The gray man gently explained that his younger 
associate was with Greenleaf as bodyguard. The 
music of harp and violins broke out and dancers swept 
round the brass gun and up and down the floors. 

XL 

THE LICENSE, THE DAGGER 

Hilary had bent an arm around Anna when Flora 
called his name. Irby handed him the order. A 
glance made it clear. Its reader cast a wide look over 
the heads of the dancers and lifting the missive high 
beckoned with it to Mandeville. Then he looked for 
some one else: “Charlie!” 

“ Out on the veranda,” said a passing dancer. 

“Send him here!” The commander’s eye came 
back to Irby: “ Old man, how long have you had this ? ” 

“About an hour.” 

“Oh, my stars, Adolphe, you should have told me!” 

It was a fair sight, though maddening to Flora yonder 
by the glass case, to see the two cousins standing eye to 
eye, Hilary’s brow dark with splendid concern while 
without a glance at Anna he passed her the despatch 
and she read it. 

“Steve,” he said, as the Mandeville pair pressed up, 
206 


The License, The Dagger 

“look at that! boots-and-saddles ! now! to-night! for 
you and Adolphe and me! Yes, Charlie, and you; 
go, get your things and put Jerry on the train with 
mine.” 

The boy’s partner was Victorine. Before she could 
gasp he had kissed her. Amid a laugh that stopped 
half the dance he waved one farewell to sister, grand- 
mother and all and sprang away. “ Dance on, fellows,” 
called Hilary, “this means only that I’m going with 
you.” The lads cheered and the dance revived. 

Their captain turned : “ Miss Flora, I promised your 
brother he should go whenever ” 

“But me al-50 you promised!” she interrupted, and 
a fair sight also, grievous to Irby, startling to Anna, were 
this pair, standing eye to eye. 

“Yes,” replied Kincaid, “ and I’ll keep my word. In 
any extremity you shall come to him.” 

“As likewise my wive to me!” said the swelling 
Mandeville, openly caressing the tearful Constance. 
“ Wive to ’usband, ” he declaimed, “ sizter to brother — ” 
But his audience was lost. Hilary was speaking 
softly to Anna. She was very pale. The throng drew 
away. You could see that he was asking if she only 
could in no extremity come to him. His words were 
inaudible, but any one who had ever loved could read 
them. And now evidently he proposed something. 
There was ardor in his eye — ardor and enterprise. 
She murmured a response. He snatched out his watch. 

“ Just time,” he was heard to say, “time enough by 
soldier’s measure!” His speech grew plainer: “The 
law’s right for me to cafl and for you to come, that’s all 
we want. What frightens you?” 

207 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“Nothing,” she said, and smiled. “I only feared 
there wasn’t time.” 

The lover faced his cousin so abruptly that all started 
and laughed, while Anna turned to her kindred, as 
red as a rose. “ Adolphe,” cried he, “I’m going for my 
marriage license. While I’m getting it, will you ? ” 

Irby went redder than Anna. “You can’t get it at 
this hour!” he said. His eyes sought Flora, but she 
was hurriedly conferring with her grandmother. 

Hilary laughed: “You’ll see. I fixed all that a week 
ago. Will you get the minister?” 

“Why, Hilary, this is ” 

“Yass!” piped Madame, “he’ll obtain him!” 

The plaudits of the dancers, who once more had 
stopped, were loud. Flora’s glance went over to Irby, 
and he said, “Why, yes, Hilary, if you — why, of course 
I will.” There was more applause. 

“Steve,” said Hilary, “some one must go with me to 
the clerk’s office to ” 

“To vouch you!” broke in the aide-de-camp. “That 
will be Steve Mandeville!” Constance sublimely ap- 
proved. As the three Callenders moved to leave the 
room one way and the three captains another, Anna 
seized the hands of Flora and her grandmother. 

“You’ll keep the dance going?” she solicited, and 
they said they would. Flora gave her a glowing em- 
brace, and as Irby strode by murmured to him. 

“Put your watch back half an hour.” 

In such disordered days social liberty was large. 
When the detective, after the Callenders were gone up- 
stairs and the captains had galloped away, truthfully 
told Miss Valcour that his only object in tarrying here 
208 


The License, The Dagger 

was to see the love-knot tied, she heard him affably, 
though inwardly in flames of yearning to see him depart. 
She burned to see him go because she believed him, and 
also because there in the show-case still lay the loosely 
heaped counterfeit of the booty whose reality she had 
already ignorantly taken and stowed away. 

What should she do ? Here was grandma, better aid 
than forty Irbys; but with both phases of her problem 
to deal with at once — how to trip headlong this wild 
matrimonial leap and how to seize this treasure by 
whose means she might leave Anna in a fallen city and 
follow Hilary to the war — she was at the end of her 
daintiest wits. She talked on with the gray man, for 
that kept him from the show-case. In an air full of 
harmonies and prattle, of fluttering draperies, gliding 
feet, undulating shoulders, twinkling lights, gallantry, 
fans, and perfume, she dazzled him with her approval 
when he enlarged on the merits of Kincaid and when 
he pledged all his powers of invention to speed the 
bridal. Frantic to think what better to do, she waltzed 
with him, while he described the colonel of the departing 
regiment as such a martinet that to ask him to delay 
his going would only hasten it; waltzed on when she 
saw her grandmother discover the knife’s absence and 
telegraph her a look of contemptuous wonder. But ah, 
how time was flying! Even now Kincaid must be re- 
turning hitherward, licensed! 

The rapturous music somewhat soothed her frenzy, 
even helped her thought, and in a thirst for all it could 
give she had her partner swing her into the wide hall 
whence it came and where also Hilary must first re- 
appear. Twice through its length they had swept, 
209 


Kincaid’s Battery 

when Anna, in altered dress, came swiftly down the 
stair with Constance protestingly at her side. The two 
were speaking anxiously together as if a choice of nuptial 
adornments (for Constance bore a box that might have 
held the old jewels) had suddenly brought to mind a 
forgotten responsibility. As they pressed into the 
drawing-rooms the two dancers floated after them by 
another door. 

When presently Flora halted beside the gun and 
fanned while the dance throbbed on, the two sisters 
stood a few steps away behind the opened show-case, 
talking with her grandmother and furtively eyed by a 
few bystanders. They had missed the dagger. Strangely 
disregarded by Anna, but to Flora’s secret dismay and 
rage, Constance, as she talked, was dropping from her 
doubled hands into the casket the last of the gems. 
Now she shut the box and laid it in Anna’s careless arms. 

Leaving the gray man by the gun, Flora sprang near. 
Anna was enduring, with distracted smiles, the eager 
reasonings of Madame and Constance that the vanished 
trinket was but borrowed; a thief would have taken the 
jewels , they argued; but as Flora would have joined in, 
every line of Anna’s face suddenly confided to her a 
consternation whose cause the silenced Flora instantly 
mistook. “Ah, if you knew — !” Anna began, but 
ceased as if the lost relic stood for something incom- 
municable even to nearest and dearest. 

“They’ve sworn their love on it!” was the thought of 
Flora and the detective in the same instant. It filled 
her veins with fury, yet her response was gentle and 
meditative. “To me,” she said, “it seemed such a 
good-for-nothing that even if I saw it is gone, me, I 


210 


For an Emergency 

think I would n’ have take’ notice.” All at once she 
brightened: “Anna! without a doubt! without a doubt 
Captain Kincaid he has it!” About to add a caress, 
she was startled from it by a masculine voice that gayly 
echoed out in the hall: 

“Without a doubt!” 

The dance ceased and first the short, round body of 
Mandeville and then the tall form of Hilary Kincaid 
pushed into the room. “Without a doubt!” repeated 
Hilary, while Mandeville asked right, asked left, for 
Adolphe. “Without a doubt,” persisted the lover, 
“Captain Kincaid he has it!” and proffered Anna the 
law’s warrant for their marriage. 

She pushed it away. Her words were so low that but 
few could hear. “The dagger!” she said. “Haven’t 
you got the dagger? You haven’t got it?” 

XLI 

FOR AN EMERGENCY 

Hilary stared, reddened as she paled, and with a 
slow smile shook his head. She murmured again: 

“It’s lost! the dagger! with all ” 

“Why, — why, Miss Anna,” — his smile grew playful, 
but his thought ran back to the exploded powder-mill, 
to the old inventor, to Flora in those days, the deported 
schoolmistress’s gold still unpaid to him, the jeweller 
and the exchanged gems, the Sterling bill — “Why, Miss 
Anna! how do you mean, lost?” 

“Taken! gone! and by my fault! I — I jorgot all 
about it” 


211 


Kincaid’s Battery 

He laughed aloud and around: “Pshaw! Now, 
ladies and gentlemen, this is some joke you’re”— he 
glanced toward the show-case 

“No,” insisted Anna, “it’s taken! Here are the 
other things.” She displayed the box. 

Madame, very angry, smiled from it to Flora: “Oh, 
thou love’s fool! not to steal that and leave the knife, 
with which, luckily! now that you have it, you dare not 
strike!” 

All this the subtle girl read in the ancient lady’s one 
small “ahem!” and for reply, in some even more 
unvoiced way, warned her against the eye of the gray 
man near the gun. To avoid whose scrutiny herself 
she returned sociably to his side. 

“The other things!” scoffed meantime the gay 
Hilary, catching up Anna’s word. “No! if you please, 
here is the only other thing!” and boyishly flaunted the 
license at Mandeville and all the Callenders, the throng 
merrily approving. His eye, falling upon the detective, 
kindled joyfully: “Oh, you godsend! You hunt up the 
lost frog-sticker, will you — while we — ?” He flour- 
ished the document again and the gray man replied 
with a cordial nod. Kincaid waved thanks and glanced 
round. “Adolphe!” he called. “Steve, where in the 
dickens ?” 

Whether he so designed it or not, the contrast be- 
tween his levity and Anna’s agitation convinced Flora, 
Madame, all, that the weapon’s only value to the lovers 
was sentimental. “Or religious,” thought the detec- 
tive, whose adjectives could be as inaccurate as his 
divinations. While he conjectured, Anna spoke once 
more to Hilary. Her vehement words were too soft 


212 


For an Emergency 

for any ear save his, but their tenor was so visible, her 
distress so passionate and her firmness of resolve so 
evident that every mere beholder fell back, letting the 
Callender-Valcour group, with Steve and the gentle 
detective, press closer. With none of them, nor yet 
with Hilary, was there anything to argue; their plight 
seemed to her hopeless. For them to marry, for her to 
default, and for him to fly, all in one mad hour — one 
whirlwind of incident — “It cannot be!” was all she 
could say, to sister, to stepmother, to Flora, to Hilary 
again: “We cannot do it! I will not! — till that lost 
thing is found!” 

With keen sympathy the detective, in the pack, en- 
joyed the play of Hilary’s face, where martial animation 
strove inspiringly against a torture of dashed hopes. 
Glancing aside to Flora’s as she turned from Anna, 
he caught there no sign of the storm of joy which had 
suddenly burst in her bosom; but for fear he might, 
and to break across his insight and reckoning, she 
addressed him. 

“Anna she don’t give any reason ,” she exclaimed. 
“Ask her, you, the reason!” 

“’Tain’t reason at all,” he softly responded, “it’s 
superstition. But hold on. Watch me.” He gest- 
ured for the lover’s attention and their eyes met. It 
made a number laugh, to see Hilary’s stare gradually 
go senseless and then blaze with intelligence. Sud- 
denly, joyfully, with every eye following his finger, he 
pointed into the gray man’s face: 

“Smellemout, you’ve got it!” 

The man shook his head for denial, and his kindly 
twinkle commanded the belief of all. Not a glint in it 
213 


Kincaid’s Battery 

showed that his next response, however well-meant, 
was to be a lie. 

“Then Ketchem has it!” cried Kincaid. 

The silent man let his smile mean yes,, and the alert 
company applauded. “Go h-on with the weddingg!” 
ordered the superior Mandeville. 

“Where’s Adolphe?” cried Kincaid, and “On with 
the wedding!” clamored the lads of the battery, while 
Anna stood gazing on the gray man and wondering why 
she had not guessed this very thing. 

“Yes,” he quietly said to her, “it’s all right. You’ll 
have it back to-morrow. ’Twon’t cut love if you don’t.” 

At that the gay din redoubled, but Flora, with the 
little grandmother vainly gripping her arms, flashed 
between the two. 

“Anna!” she cried, “I don’t bil-ieve!” 

Whether it was true or false Mandeville cared noth- 
ing, but — “Yes, ’t is true!” he cried in Flora’s face, and 
then to the detective — “Doubtlezz to phot-ograph it 
that’s all you want!” 

The detective said little, but Anna assured Flora that 
was all. “He wants to show it at the trial!” 

“Listen!” said Flora. 

“Here’s Captain Irby!” cried Mrs. Callender — Con- 
stance — half a dozen, but 

“Listen!” repeated Flora, and across the curtained 
veranda and in at the open windows, under the general 
clamor, came a soft palpitating rumble. Did Hilary 
hear it, too ? He was calling: 

“ Adolphe, where’s your man — the minister ? Where 

in the — three parishes ? ” and others were echoing, 

“The minister! where’s the minister?” 


214 


For an Emergency 

Had they also caught the sound ? 

“ Isn’t he here?” asked Irby. He drew his watch. 

“ Half-hour slow!” cried Mandeville, reading it. 

“But have you heard noth ?” 

“Nothingg!” roared Mandeville. 

“ Where’d you leave him?” sharply asked Kincaid. 

His cousin put on great dignity: “At his door, my 
dear sir, waiting for the cab I sent him.” 

“Oh, sent!” cried half the group. “Steve,” called 
Kincaid, “your horse is fresh ” 

“ But, alas, without wings!” wailed the Creole, caught 
Hilary’s shoulder and struck a harkening pose. 

“Too late!” moaned Flora to the detective, Madame 
to Constance and Miranda, and the battery lads to 
their girls, from whose hands they began to wring wild 
good-byes as a peal of fifes and drums heralded the on- 
come of the departing regiment. 

Thus Charlie Valcour found the company as sud- 
denly he reappeared in it, pushing in to the main group 
where his leader stood eagerly engaged with Anna. 

“All right, Captain!” He saluted: “All done!” But 
a fierce anxiety was on his brow and he gave no heed 
to Hilary’s dismissing thanks: “Captain, what’s ‘too 
late’?” He turned, scowling, to his sister: “What are 
we too late for, Flo? Good God! not the wedding? 
Not your wedding, Miss Anna ? It’s not too late. By 
Jove, it sha’n’t be too late.” 

All the boyish lawlessness of his nature rose into his 
eyes, and a boy’s tears with it. “The minister!” he 
retorted to Constance and his grandmother, “the min- 
ister be — Oh, Captain, don’t wait for him! Have the 
thing without a minister!” 

215 


Kincaid’s Battery 

The whole room was laughing, Hilary loudest, but 
the youth’s voice prevailed. “It’ll hold good!” He 
turned upon the detective: “Won’t it?” 

A merry nod was the reply, with cries of “Yes,” 
“Yes,” from the battery boys, and he clamored on: 

“Why, there’s a kind of people ” 

“Quakers!” sang out some one. 

“Yes, the Quakers! Don’t they do it all the time! 
Of course they do!” With a smile in his wet eyes the 
lad wheeled upon Victorine: “Oh, by S’n’ Peter! if 
that was the only ” 

But the small, compelling hand of the detective 
faced him round again and with a sudden swell of the 
general laugh he laughed too. “He’s trying to behave 
like Captain Kincaid,” one battery sister tried to tell 
another, whose attention was on a more interesting 
matter. 

“Here!” the gray man was amiably saying to Charlie. 
“It’s your advice that’s too late. Look.” 

Before he had half spoken a hush so complete had 
fallen on the company that while every eye sought 
Hilary and Anna every ear was aware that out on the 
levee road the passing drums had ceased and the brass 
—as if purposely to taunt the theatrical spirit of Flora — 
had struck up The Ladies’ Man. With military curt- 
ness Kincaid was addressing the score or so of new 
cannoneers : 

“Corporal Valcour, this squad — no, keep your 
partners, but others please stand to the right and left — 
these men are under your command. When I presently 
send you from here you’ll take them at a double-quick 
and close up with that regiment. I’ll be at the train 
216 


For an Emergency 

when you reach it. Captain Mandeville,” — he turned 
to the married pair, who were hurriedly scanning the 
license Miranda had just handed them, — “I adjure 
you as a true and faithful citizen and soldier, and you, 
madam, as well, to testify to us, all, whether that is or 
is not the license of court for the marriage of Anna 
Callender to Hilary Kincaid.” 

“It is!” eagerly proclaimed the pair. 

“Hand it, please, to Charlie. Corporal, you and 
your men look it over.” 

“And now — ” His eyes swept the throng. Anna’s 
hand, trembling but ready, rose shoulder-high in his. 
He noted the varied expressions of face among the 
family servants hurriedly gathering in the doors, and 
the beautiful amaze of Flora, so genuine yet so well 
acted. Radiantly he met the flushed gaze of his 
speechless cousin. “If any one alive,” he cried, 
“knows any cause why this thing should not be, let 
him now speak or forever hereafter hold his peace.” 
He paused. Constance handed something to her hus- 
band. 

“ Oh, go on,” murmured Charlie, and many smiled. 

“Soldiers!” resumed the lover, “this fair godmother 
of your flag agrees that for all we two want just now 
Kincaid’s Battery is minister enough. For all we want 
is ” Cheers stopped him. 

“The prayer-book!” put in Mandeville, pushing it 
at him. The boys harkened again. 

“No,” said Kincaid, “time’s too short. All we want 
is to bind ourselves, before Heaven and all mankind, 
in holy wedlock, for better, or worse, till death us do 
part. And this we here do in sight of you all, and in 
217 


Kincaid’s Battery 

the name and sight and fear of God.” He dropped 
his glance to Anna’s: “ Say Amen.” 

“ Amen,” said Anna. At the same moment in one of 
the doors stood a courier. 

“ All right ! ” called Hilary to him. “Tell your colonel 
we’re coming! Just a second more, Captain Irby, if 
you please. Soldiers! — I, Hilary, take thee, Anna, 
to be my lawful wedded wife. And you ” 

“I, Anna,” she softly broke in, “take thee, Hilary, 

to be my ” She spoke the matter through, but he 

had not waited. 

“Therefore!” he cried, “you men of Kincaid’s Bat- 
tery — and you, sir, — and you,” — nodding right and left 
to Mandeville and the detective, — “on this our solemn 
pledge to supply as soon as ever we can all form of law 
and social usage here omitted which can more fully 
solemnize this union — do now ” 

Up went the detective’s hand and then Mandeville’ s 
and all the boys’, and all together said: 

“Pronounce you man and wife.” 

“Go!” instantly rang Kincaid to Charlie, and in a 
sudden flutter of gauzes and clink of trappings, with 
wringing of soft fingers by hard ones, and in a tender 
clamor of bass and treble voices, away sprang every 
cannoneer to knapsacks and sabres in the hall, and 
down the outer stair into ranks and off under the stars 
at double-quick. Sisters of the battery, gliding out to 
the veranda rail, faintly saw and heard them a precious 
moment longer as they sped up the dusty road. Then 
Irby stepped quickly out, ran down the steps, mounted 
and galloped. A far rumble of wheels told the coming 
of two omnibuses chartered to bear the dancers all, with 
218 


For an Emergency 

the V alcours and the detective, to their homes. Now out 
to the steps came Mandeville. His wife was with him 
and the maidens kindly went in. There the detective 
joined them. At a hall door Hilary was parting with 
Madame, Flora, Miranda. Anna was near him with 
Flora’s arm about her in melting fondness. Now Con- 
stance rejoined the five, and now Hilary and Anna 
left the other four and passed slowly out to the garden 
stair alone. 

Beneath them there, with welcoming notes, his lone 
horse trampled about the hitching-rail. Dropping his 
cap the master folded the bride’s ha^ds in his and 
pressed on them a long kiss. The pair looked deeply 
into each other’s eyes. Her brow drooped and he laid 
a kiss on it also. “Now you must go,” she murmured. 

“My own beloved!” was his response. “My soul’s 
mate!” He tried to draw her, but she held back. 

“You must go,” she repeated. 

“Yes! kiss me ?nd I fly.” He tried once more to 
draw her close, but still in vain. 

“No, dearest,” she whispered, and trembled. Yet 
she clutched his imprisoning fingers and kissed them. 
He hugged her hands to his breast. 

“Oh, Hilary,” she added, “I wish I could! But — 
don’t you know why I can’t? Don’t you see?” 

“No, my treasure, not any more. Why, Anna, 
you’re Anna Kincaid now. You’re my wed’ ” 

Her start of distress stopped him short. “Don’t 
call me that, — my — my own,” she faltered. 

“But if you are that ?” 

“Oh, I am! thank God, I am! But don’t name the 
name. It’s too fearfully holy. We’re married for an 
219 


Kincaid’s Battery 

emergency, love, an awful crisis ! which hasn’t come to 
you yet, and may not come at all. When it does, so 
will I! in that name! and you shall call me by it!” 

“Ah, if then you can come! But what do we know?” 

“We know in whom we trust, Hilary; must, must, 
must trust, as we trust and must trust each other.” 

Still hanging to his hands she pushed them off at 
arm’s-length: “Oh, my Hilary, my hero, my love, my 
life, my commander, go!” And yet she clung. She 
drew his fingers close down again and covered them 
with kisses, while twice, thrice, in solemn adoration, 
he laid his lips upon her heavy hair. Suddenly the two 
looked up. The omnibuses were here in the grove. 

Here too was the old coachman, with the soldier’s 
horse. The vehicles jogged near and halted. A troop 
of girls, with Flora, tripped out. And still, in their 
full view, with Flora closest, the bride’s hands held the 
bridegroom’s fast. He had neither the strength to pull 
free nor the wit to understand. 

“What is it?” he softly asked, as the staring men 
waited and the girls about Flora hung back. 

“Don’t you know?” murmured Anna. “Don’t you 
see — the — the difference ? ” 

All at once he saw! Throwing away her hands he 
caught her head between his big palms. Her arms 
flew round his neck, her lips went to his, and for three 
heart-throbs they clung like bee and flower. Then he 
sprang down the sfair, swung into the saddle, and fled 
after his men. 


220 


“ Victory! I Heard it as PI’—” 


XLII 

“VICTORY! I HEARD IT AS Pi/—’ ” 

The last few days of March and first three or four of 
April, since the battery boys and the three captains had 
gone, were as full of frightened and angry questions as 
the air is of bees around a shaken hive. 

So Anna had foreboded, yet it was not so for the 
causes she had in mind; not one fierce hum asked 
another where the bazaar’s money was. That earlier 
bazaar, in the St. Louis Hotel, had taken six weeks to 
report its results, and now, with everybody distracted 
by a swarm and buzz of far larger, livelier, hotter 
queries, the bazaar’s sponsors might report or not, as 
they chose. Meanwhile, was the city really in dire and 
shameful jeopardy, or was it as safe as the giddiest 
boasted? Looking farther away, over across Georgia 
to Fort Pulaski, so tremendously walled and armed, 
was the “invader” merely wasting fives, trying to take 
it? On North Carolina’s coast, where our priceless 
blockade-runners plied, had Newbem, as so stubbornly 
rumored, and had Beaufort, already fallen, or had 
they really not? Had the Virginia not sunk the Moni- 
tor and scattered the Northern fleets? Was it not by 
France, after all (asked the Creoles), but only by Para- 
guay that the Confederacy had been “reco’nize”’ ? 
Was there no truth in the joyous report that McClellan 
had vanished from Yorktown peninsula ? Was the loss 
of Cumberland Gap a trivial matter, and did it in fact 
not cut in two our great strategic front ? Up yonder at 
Corinth, our “new and far better” base, was Sidney 


221 


Kincaid’s Battery 

Johnston an “imbecile,” a “coward,” a “traitor”? or 
was he not rather an unparagoned strategist who, 
having at last “lured the presumptuous foe” into his 
toils, was now, with Beauregard, notwithstanding 
Beauregard’s protracted illness, about to make the “one 
fell swoop” of our complete deliverance? And after 
the swoop and its joy and its glory, when Johnnie should 
come marching home, whose Johnnies, and how many, 
would never return ? As to your past-and-gone bazaar, 
law, honey ! 

So, as to that item, in all the wild-eyed city shaking 
with its ague of anxieties only Anna was troubled when 
day after day no detective came back with the old mud- 
caked dagger and now both were away on some quite 
alien matter, no one could say where. She alone was 
troubled, for she alone knew it was the bazaar’s pro- 
ceeds which had disappeared. Of what avail to tell 
even Miranda, Connie, or Flora if they must not tell 
others? It would only bind three more souls on the 
rack. “Vanished with the dagger!” That would be 
all they could gasp, first amazed, then scandalized, at a 
scheme of safe-keeping so fantastically reckless; reck- 
less and fantastical as her so-called marriage. Yes, 
they would be as scandalized as they would have been 
charmed had the scheme prospered. And then they 
would blame not her but Hilary. Blame him in idle 
fear of a calamity that was not going to befall ! 

She might have told that sternest, kindest, wisest of 
friends, Doctor Sevier. As the family’s trustee he 
might yet have to be told. But on that night of fantas- 
tical recklessness he had been away, himself at Corinth 
to show them there how to have vastly better hospitals, 


222 


“ Victory ! I Heard it as Pi’—” 


and to prescribe for his old friend Beauregard. He 
had got back but yesterday. Or she might have told 
the gray detective, just to make him more careful, as 
Hilary, by letter, suggested. In part she had told him, 
through Flora; told him that to save that old curio she 
would risk her life. Surely, knowing that, he would safe- 
guard it, in whatever hands, and return it the moment 
he could. Who ever heard of a detective not returning 
a thing the moment he could? Not Flora, not yet 
Madame, they said. To be sure, thought Anna, those 
professional masters of delay, the photographers, might 
be more jewel-wise than trustworthy, but what photog- 
rapher could ever be so insane as to rob a detective? 
So, rather ashamed of one small solicitude in this day 
of great ones, she urged her committees for final re- 
ports — which never came — and felt very wifely in 
writing her hero for his consent to things, and to assure 
him that at the worst her own part of the family estate 
would make everything good, the only harrowing ques- 
tion' being how to keep Miranda and Connie from 
sharing the loss. 

On the first Sunday evening in April Doctor Sevier 
took tea with the Callenders, self-invited, alone and 
firmly oblivious of his own tardy wedding-gift to Anna 
as it gleamed at him on the board. To any of a hun- 
dred hostesses he would have been a joy, to share with 
as many friends as he would consent to meet ; for in the 
last week he had eaten “ hog and hominy,” and sipped 
cornmeal coffee, in lofty colloquy with Sidney Johnston 
and his “big generals”; had talked confidentially with 
Polk, so lately his own bishop; had ridden through the 
miry streets of Corinth with all the New Orleans com- 
223 


Kincaid’s Battery 

manders of division or brigade — Gibson, Trudeau, 
Ruggles, Brodnax; out on the parapets, between the 
guns, had chatted with Hilary and his loved lieutenants; 
down among the tents and mess-fires had given his 
pale hand, with Spartan injunctions and all the home 
news, to George Gregory, Ned Ferry, Dick Smith, and 
others of Harper’s cavalry, and — circled round by 
Charlie Valcour, Sam Gibbs, Maxime, and scores of 
their comrades in Kincaid’s Battery — had seen once 
more their silken flag, so faded ! and touched its sacred 
stains and tatters. Now at the tea table something 
led him to remark that here at home the stubborn 
illness of this battery sister for whom Anna was acting 
as treasurer had compelled him to send her away. 

Timely topic: How to go into the country, and 
whither. The Callenders were as eager for all the 
facts and counsel he could give on it as if they were the 
“big generals” and his facts and counsel were as to the 
creeks, swamps, ridges, tangled ravines, few small clear- 
ings, and many roads and by-roads in the vast, thinly 
settled, small-farmed, rain-drenched forests between 
Corinth and the clay bluffs of the Tennessee. For now 
the Callenders also were to leave the city, as soon as 
they could be ready. 

“Don’t wait till then,” crisply said the Doctor. 

“We must wait till Nan winds up the bazaar.” 

He thought not. In what bank had she its money? 

When she said not in any he frowned. Whereupon 
she smilingly stammered that she was told the banks 
themselves were sending their treasure into the country, 
and that even ten days earlier, when some one wanted 
to turn a fund into its safest portable form, three banks 
224 


“Victory! I Heard it as Pi’—” 

had declined to give foreign exchange for it at any 
price. 

“Hmm!” he mused. “Was that your, eh, ?” 

“My husband, yes,” said Anna, so quietly that the 
sister and stepmother exulted in her. As quietly her 
eyes held the doctor’s, and his hers, while the colour 
mounted to her brow. He spoke: 

“Still he got it into some good shape for you, the 
fund, did he not ? ” Then suddenly he clapped a hand to 
a breast pocket and stared : “ He gave me a letter for you. 

Did I ? Ah, yes, I have your written thanks. Anna, 

I thoroughly approve what you and he have done.” 

Constance and Miranda were overjoyed. He turned 
to them: “I told Hilary so up in camp. I told Steve. 
Yes, Anna, you were wise. You are wise. I’ve no 
doubt you’re doing wisely about that fund.” 

It was hard for the wise one not to look guilty. 

“Have you told anybody,” he continued, “in what 
form you have it, or where?” 

“No!” put in the aggrieved Constance, “not even 
her blood kin!” 

“ Wise again. Best for all of you. Now just hang to 
the lucre. It comes too late to be of use here; this 
brave town will have to stand or fall without it. But 
it’s still good for Mobile, and Mobile saved may be 
New Orleans recovered. 

On a hint from the other women, and urged by their 
visitor, Anna brought the letter and read him several 
closely written pages on the strategic meaning of things. 
The zest with which he discussed the lines made her 
newly proud of their source. 

“They’re so like his very word o’ mouth,” said he, 
225 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“they bring him right back here among us. Yes, and 
the whole theatre of action with him. They draw it 
about us so closely and relate it all to us so vitally that 
it ” 

“Seems,” broke in the delighted Constance, “as if 
we saw it all from the top of this house!” 

The Doctor’s jaw set. Who likes phrases stuffed 
into his mouth? Yet presently he allowed himself to 
resume. It confirmed, he said, Beauregard’s word in 
his call for volunteers, that there, before Corinth, was 
the place to defend Louisiana. Soon he had regained 
his hueless ardor, and laid out the whole matter on the 
table for the inspiration of his three confiding auditors. 
Here at Chattanooga, so impregnably ours, issued 
Tennessee river and the Memphis and Charleston rail- 
road from the mountain gateway between our eastern 
and western seats of war. Here they swept down into 
Alabama, passed from the state’s north-east to its north- 
west corner and parted company. Here the railway 
continued westward, here it crossed the Mobile and 
Ohio railroad at Corinth, here the Mississippi Central 
at Grand Junction, and pressed on to Memphis, our 
back-gate key of the Mississippi. 

“In war,” said the Doctor, “rivers and railro’ ” 

“Are the veins and arteries of — oh, pardon!” The 
crime was Anna’s this time. 

“Are the lines fought for,” resumed the speaker, 
“and wherever two or three of them join or cross you 
may look for a battle.” His long finger dropped again 
to the table. Back here in Alabama the Tennessee 
turned north to seek the Ohio, and here, just over the 
Mississippi state line, in Tennessee, some twenty miles 
226 


“ Victory ! I Heard it as Pi’—” 


north of Corinth, it became navigable for the Ohio’s 
steamboats — gunboats — transports — at a place called 
in the letter “Pittsburg Landing.” 

Yes, now, between Hilary’s pages and the Doctor’s 
logic, with Hilary almost as actually present as the 
physician, the ladies saw why this great Memphis- 
Chattanooga fighting line was, not alone pictorially, but 
practically, right at hand I barely beyond sight and hear- 
ing or the feel of its tremor; a veritable back garden 
wall to them and their beloved city; as close as forts 
Jackson and St. Philip, her front gate. Yes, and — 
Anna ventured to point out and the Doctor grudgingly 
admitted — if the brave gray hosts along that back wall 
should ever — could ever — be borne back so far south- 
ward, westward, the last line would have to run from 
one to another of the Crescent City’s back doorsteps 
and doors; from Vicksburg, that is, eastward through 
Jackson, Mississippi’s capital, cross the state’s two 
north-and-south railways, and swing down through 
Alabama to Mobile on the Gulf. This, she silently 
perceived, was why the letter and the Doctor quite 
agreed that Connie, Miranda, and she ought to find their 
haven somewhere within the dim region between New 
Orleans and those three small satellite cities; not near 
any two railways, yet close enough to a single one for 
them to get news, public or personal, in time to act on it. 

At leave-taking came the guest’s general summing 
up of fears and faiths. All his hope for New Orleans, 
he said, was in the forts down at the Passes. Should 
they fall the city could not stand. But amid their 
illimitable sea marshes and their impenetrable swamp 
forests, chin-deep in the floods of broken levees, he 
227 


Kincaid’s Battery 

truly believed, they would hold out. Let them do so 
only till the first hot breath of real Delta summer should 
bring typhoid, breakbone, yellow, and swamp fevers, 
the last by all odds the worst, and Butler’s unacclimated 
troops would have to reembark for home pell-mell or 
die on Ship Island like poisoned fish. So much for the 
front gate. For the back gate, Corinth, which just 
now seemed — the speaker harkened. 

“Seemed,” he resumed, “so much more like the 
front — listen!” There came a far, childish call. 

“An extra,” laughed Constance. “Steve says we 
issue one every time he brushes his uniform.” 

“But, Con,” argued Anna, “an extra on Sunday 

evening, brought away down here ” The call 

piped nearer. 

“Victory!” echoed Constance. “I heard it as 
pi’ ” 

“Beauregard! Tennessee!” exclaimed both sisters. 
They flew to the veranda, the other two following. 
Down in the gate could be seen the old coachman, 
already waiting to buy the paper. Constance called to 
him their warm approval. “I thought,” murmured 
Miranda, “that Beauregard was in Miss’ ” 

Anna touched her, and the cry came again: “Great 

victory !” Yes, yes, but by whom, and where? 

Johnston? Corinth? “Great victory at !” 

Where? Where, did he say? The word came again, 
and now again, but still it was tauntingly vague. 
Anna’s ear seemed best, yet even she could say only, 
“I never heard of such a place — out of the bible. 
It sounds like — Shiloh.” 

Shiloh it was. At a table lamp indoors the Doctor 
228 


Sabbath at Shiloh 

bent over the fresh print. “It’s true,” he affirmed. 
“It’s Beauregard’s own despatch. ‘A complete vic- 
tory,’ he says. ‘ Driving the enemy’ ” The reader 

ceased and stared at the page. “Why, good God!” 
Slowly he lifted his eyes upon those three sweet women 
until theirs ran full. And then he stared once more 
into the page: “Oh, good God! Albert Sidney Johns- 
ton is dead.” 

XLIII 

SABBATH AT SHILOH 

“Whole theatre of action.” 

The figure had sounded apt to Anna on that Sunday 
evening when the Doctor employed it; apt enough — 
until the outburst of that great and dreadful news 
whose inseparable implications and forebodings robbed 
her of all sleep that night and made her the first one 
astir at daybreak. But thenceforward, and now for 
half a week or more, the aptness seemed quite to have 
passed. Strange was the theatre whose play was all and 
only a frightful reality; whose swarming, thundering, 
smoking stage had its audience, its New Orleans audi- 
ence, wholly behind it, and whose curtain of distance, 
however thin, mocked every bodily sense and compelled 
all to be seen and heard by the soul’s eye and ear, with 
all the joy and woe of its actuality and all its suspense, 
terror, triumph, heartbreak, and despair. 

Yet here was that theatre, and the Doctor’s metaphor 
was still good enough for the unexacting taste of the 
two Valcour ladies, to whom Anna had quoted it. 
And here, sprinkled through the vast audience of that 
229 


Kincaid’s Battery 

theatre, with as keen a greed for its play as any, were all 
the various non-combatants with whom we are here 
concerned, though not easily to be singled out, such 
mere units were they of the impassioned multitude 
every mere unit of which, to loved and loving ones, 
counted for more than we can tell. 

However, our favourites might be glimpsed now and 
then. On a certain mid-day of that awful half-week 
the Callenders, driving, took up Victorine at her gate 
and Flora at her door and sped up-town to the news- 
paper offices in Camp street to rein in against a count- 
less surge of old men in fine dress, their precious dig- 
nity thrown to the dogs, each now but one of the com- 
mon herd, and each against all, shouldering, sweating, 
and brandishing wide hands to be the first purchaser 
and reader of the list, the long, ever-lengthening list of 
the killed and wounded. Much had been learned of 
the great two-days’ battle, and many an infantry sister, 
and many a battery sister besides Anna, was second- 
sighted enough to see, night and day, night and day, 
the muddy labyrinth of roads and by-roads that braided 
and traversed the wide, unbroken reaches of dense 
timber — with their deep ravines, their long ridges, and 
their creek-bottom marshes and sloughs — in the day’s 
journey from Corinth to the bluffs of the Tennessee. 
They saw them, not empty, nor fearlessly crossed by the 
quail, the wild turkey, the fox, or the unhunted deer, 
nor travelled alone by the homespun “citizen” or by 
scouts or foragers, but slowly overflowed by a great 
gray, silent, tangled, armed host — cavalry, infantry, 
ordnance trains, batteries, battery wagons and ambu- 
ances: Saw Hilary Kincaid and all his heroes and 
230 


Sabbath at Shiloh 

their guns, and all the “big generals” and their smart 
escorts and busy staffs: Saw the various columns im- 
peding each other, taking wrong ways and losing price- 
less hours while thousands of inexperienced boys, 
footsore, drenched and shivering yet keen for the fight, 
ate their five-days , food in one, or threw it away to 
lighten the march, and toiled on in hunger, mud, cold 
and rain, without the note of a horn or drum or the dis- 
tant eye of one blue scout to tell of their oncoming. 

They saw, did Anna and those sisters (and many and 
many a wife and mother from Callender House to Car- 
rollton), the vast, stealthy, fireless bivouac at fall of 
night, in ear-shot of the enemy’s tattoo, unsheltered from 
the midnight storm save by raked-up leaves : Saw, just in 
the bivouac’s tortuous front, softly reddening the low 
wet sky, that huge, rude semicircle of camps in the 
dark ridged and gullied forests about Shiloh’s log meet- 
ing-house, where the victorious Grant’s ten-thousands — 
from Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, 
Wisconsin, Michigan, as new to arms as their foe, yet 
a band of lions in lair — lay dry-tented, full fed and fast 
asleep, safely flanked by swollen streams, their gun- 
boats behind them and Buell coming, but without one 
mounted outpost, a scratch of entrenchment or a whis- 
per of warning. 

Amid the eager carriage talk, in which Anna kept her 
part, her mind’s eye still saw the farther scene as it 
changed again and the gray dawn and gray host fur- 
tively rose together and together silently spread through 
the deep woods. She watched the day increase and 
noon soar up and sink away while the legions of Hardee, 
Bragg, Polk and Breckinridge slowly Writhed out of 
231 


Kincaid’s Battery 

their perplexed folds and set themselves, still unde- 
tected, in their three successive lines of battle. She be- 
held the sun set calm and clear, the two hosts lie down 
once more, one in its tents, the other on its arms, the 
leafy night hang over them resplendent with stars, its 
watches near by, the Southern lines reawaken in re- 
covered strength, spring up and press forward exult- 
antly to the awful issue, and the Sabbath dawn brighten 
into a faultless day with the boom of the opening gun. 

As the ladies drew up behind the throng and across 
the throat of Commercial Alley the dire List began to 
flutter from the Picayune office in greedy palms and 
over and among dishevelled heads like a feeding swarm 
of white pigeons. News there was as well as names, 
but every eye devoured the names first and then — un- 
less some name struck lightning in the heart, as Anna 
saw it do every here and there and for that poor old 
man over yonder — after the names the news. 

“Nan, we needn’t stay if you ” 

“Oh, Miranda, isn’t all this ours?” 

The bulletin boards were already telling in outline, 
ahead of the list, thrilling things about the Orleans 
Guards, the whirlwind onset of whose maiden bayonets 
had captured double its share of the first camp taken 
from the amazed, unbreakfasted enemy, and who again 
and again, hour by hour, by the half-mile and mile, had 
splendidly helped to drive him — while he hammered 
back with a deadly stubbornness all but a match for their 
fury. Through forests, across clearings, over streams 
and bogs and into and out of ravines and thickets they 
had swept, seizing transiently a whole field battery, 
permanently hundreds of prisoners, and covering the 
232 


Sabbath at Shiloh 

strife’s broad wake with even more appalling numbers 
of their own dead and wounded than of the foe’s: 
wailing wounded, ghastly, grimy dead, who but yester- 
day were brothers, cousins and playmates of these very 
men snatching and searching the list. They told, those 
boards, of the Washington Artillery (fifth company, 
never before under fire) being thanked on the field by 
one of the “ big generals,” their chests and wheels shot 
half to splinters but no gun lost. They told of all 
those Louisiana commands whose indomitable lines 
charged and melted, charged and withered, over and 
over the torn and bloody ground in that long, horrible 
struggle that finally smoked out the “ Hornets’ Nest.” 
They told of the Crescent Regiment, known and loved 
on all these sidewalks and away up to and beyond their 
Bishop- General Polk’s Trinity Church, whose desperate 
gallantry had saved that same Washington Artillery 
three of its pieces, and to whose thinned and bleeding 
ranks swarms of the huddled Western farm boys, as 
shattered and gory as their captors and as glorious, had 
at last laid down their arms. And they told of Kincaid’s 
Battery, Captain Kincaid commanding; how, having 
early lost in the dense oak woods and hickory brush the 
brigade — Brodnax’s — whose way they had shelled open 
for a victorious charge, they had followed their galloping 
leader, the boys running beside the wheels, from posi- 
tion to position, from ridge to ridge, in rampant obedi- 
ence of an order to “go in wherever they heard the hot- 
test firing”, how for a time they had fought hub to hub 
beside the Washington Artillery; how two of their guns, 
detached for a special hazard and sweeping into fresh 
action on a flank of the “Hornets’ Nest,” had lost 
233 


Kincaid’s Battery 

every horse at a single volley of the ambushed foe, yet 
had instantly replied with slaughterous vengeance; and 
how, for an hour thereafter, so wrapped in their own 
smoke that they could be pointed only by the wheel-ruts 
of their recoil, they had been worked by their depleted 
gunners on hands and knees with Kincaid and Vil- 
leneuve themselves at the trails and with fuses cut to 
one second. So, in scant outline said the boards, or 
more in detail read one man aloud to another as they 
hurried by the carriage. 

“But,” said Anna, while Flora enjoyed her pallor, 
“ all that is about the first day’s fight ! ” 

“No,” cried Constance, “it’s the second day’s, that 
Beauregard calls ‘a great and glorious victory!’” 

“Yes,” interposed Flora, “but writing from behind 
his fortification’ at Corinth, yes f ” 


XLIV 

“they were all four together” 

Both Constance and Victorine flashed to retort, but 
saw the smiling critic as pale as Anna and recalled the 
moment’s truer business, the list still darting innumer- 
ably around them always out of reach. The carriage 
had to push into the very surge, and Victorine to stand 
up and call down to this man and that, a fourth and 
fifth, before one could be made to hear and asked to 
buy for the helpless ladies. Yet in this gentlewomen’s 
war every gentlewoman’s wish was a military command, 
and when at length one man did hear, to hear was to 
vanish in the turmoil on their errand. Now he was 
234 


“They Were all Four Together” 


back again, with the list, three copies! Oh, thank you, 
thank you and thank you! 

Away trotted the handsome span while five pairs of 
beautiful eyes searched the three printed sheets, that bore 
— oh, marvellous fortune! — not one of the four names 
writ largest in those five hearts. Let joy be — ah, let joy 
be very meek while to so many there is unutterable loss. 
Yet let it meekly abound for the great loved cause so 
splendidly advanced. Miranda pointed Anna to a bit 
of editorial: 

“Monday was a more glorious day than Sunday. 
We can scarcely forbear to speculate upon the great re- 
sults that are to flow from this decisive victory. An in- 
stant pursuit of the flying enemy should ” 

Why did the carriage halt at a Gravier Street crossing 
obliquely opposite the upper front comer of the St. 
Charles Hotel? Why did all the hotel’s gold-braided 
guests and loungers so quietly press out against its upper 
balustrades ? Why, under its arches, and between bal- 
cony posts along the curbstones clear down to Canal 
Street, was the pathetically idle crowd lining up so si- 
lently? From that point why, now, did the faint breeze 
begin to waft a low roar of drums of such grave un- 
martial sort? And why, gradually up the sidewalks’ 
edges in the hot sun, did every one so solemnly un- 
cover ? Small Victorine stood up to see. 

At first she made out only that most commonplace 
spectacle, home guards. They came marching in pla- 
toons, a mere company or two. In the red and blue of 
their dress was ail the smartness yet of last year, but in 
their tread was none of it and even the bristle of their 
steel had vanished. Behind majestic brasses and muf- 
235 


Kincaid’s Battery 

fled drums grieving out the funeral march, they stepped 
with slow precision and with arms reversed. But now 
in abrupt contrast there appeared, moving as slowly 
and precisely after them, widely apart on either side of 
the stony way, two single attenuated files of but four 
bronzed and shabby gray-jackets each, with four others 
in one thin, open rank from file to file in their rear, and 
in the midst a hearse and its palled burden. Rise, 
Anna, Constance, Miranda — all. Ah, Albert Sidney 
Johnston! Weep, daughters of a lion-hearted cause. 
The eyes of its sons are wet. Yet in your gentle bosoms 
keep great joy for whoever of your very own and 
nearest the awful carnage has spared ; but hither comes, 
here passes slowly, and yonder fades at length from 
view, to lie a day in state and so move on to burial, a 
larger hope of final triumph than ever again you may 
fix on one mortal man. 

Hats on again, softly. Drift apart, aimless crowd. 
Cross the two streets at once, diagonally, you, young man 
from the St. Charles Hotel with purpose in your rapid 
step, pencil unconsciously in hand and trouble on your 
brow. Regather your reins, old coachman — nay, one 
moment! The heavy-hearted youth passed so close 
under the horses’ front that only after he had gained 
the banquette abreast the carriage did he notice its oc- 
cupants and Anna’s eager bow. It was the one-armed 
Kincaid’s Battery boy reporter. With a sudden pitying 
gloom he returned the greeting, faltered as if to speak, 
caught a breath and then hurried on and away. What 
did that mean; more news: news bad for these five in 
particular ? Silently in each of them, without a glance 
from one to another, the question asked itself. 

236 


“They Were all Four Together” 


“The True Delta,” remarked Anna to Miranda, “is 
right down here on the next square,” and of his own 
motion the driver turned that way. 

“ Bitwin Common Strit and Can-al,” added Victorine, 
needless words being just then the most needed. 

Midway in front of the hotel Anna softly laid a hand 
on Flora, who respondingly murmured. For the re- 
porter was back, moving their way along the sidewalk 
almost at a run. Now Constance was aware of him. 

“When we cross Common Street,” she observed to 
Miranda, “he’ll want to stop us.” 

In fact, as soon as their intent to cross was plain, he 
sped out beside them and stood, his empty sleeve pin- 
ned up, his full one raised and grief evident in his 
courteous smile. Some fifty yards ahead, by the True 
Delta office, men were huddling around a fresh bulletin. 
Baring his brow to the sun, the young man came close 
to the wheels. 

“Wouldn’t you-all as soon — ?” he began, but Con- 
stance interrupted : 

“The news is as good as ever, isn’t it?” 

“Yes, but wouldn’t you-all as soon drive round by 
Carondelet Street ? ” A gesture with his hat showed a 
piece of manifold writing in his fingers. 

He looked to Miranda, but she faltered. Flora, in 
her own way, felt all the moment’s rack and stress, but 
some natures are built for floods and rise on them like 
a boat. So thought she of herself and had parted her 
lips to speak for all, when, to her vexed surprise, Anna 
lifted a hand and in a clear, firm tone inquired, “Is 
there any bad news for us five ? ” The youth’s tongue 
failed; he nodded. 


237 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“Brodnax’s brigade?” she asked. “Our battery?” 

“Yes, Monday, just at the last,” he murmured. 

“Not taken?” 

“Not a gun!” replied the boy, with a flash. Anna 
reflected it, but her tone did not change : 

“There are four men, you know, whom we five ” 

“Yes.” 

“ Which of them is the bad news about ? ” 

“All four,” murmured the youth. His eyes swam. 
His hat went under the stump of his lost arm and he 
proffered the bit of writing. Idlers were staring. “Take 
that with you,” he said. “They were all four to- 
gether and they’re only ” 

The carriage was turning, but the fair cluster bent 
keenly toward him. “Only what?” they cried. 

“Missing.” 

XLV 

STEVE — MAXIME — CHARLIE — 

There was no real choice. Nothing seemed quite 
rational but the heaviest task of all — to wait, and to 
wait right here at home. 

To this queenly city must come first and fullest all 
news of her own sons, and here the “five” would not 
themselves be “missing” should better tidings — or 
worse — come seeking them over the wires. 

“At the front?” replied Doctor Sevier to Anna, 
“why, at the front you’ll be kept in the rear, lost in 
a storm of false rumors.” 

General Brodnax, in a letter rife with fatherly 
romantic tenderness and with splendid praise of Hilary 
238 


Steve— Maxime— Charlie— 

as foremost in the glorious feat which had saved old 
‘‘Roaring Betsy ” but lost (or mislaid) him and his 
three comrades, also bade her wait. Everything, he 
assured her, that human sympathy or the art of war 
— or Beauregard’s special orders — could effect was 
being done to find the priceless heroes. In the retreat 
of a great host — ah, me! retreat was his very word 
and the host was Dixie’s — retreating after its first 
battle, and that an awful one, in deluging rains over 
frightful roads and brimming streams, unsheltered, 
ill fed, with sick and wounded men and reeling vehicles 
hourly breaking down, a hovering foe to be fended off, 
and every dwelling in the land a hospitable refuge, 
even captains of artillery or staff might be most honor- 
ably and alarmingly missing yet reappear safe and 
sound. So, for a week and more it was sit and wait, 
pace the floor and wait, wake in the night and wait; 
so for Flora as well as for Anna (with a difference), 
both of them anxious for Charlie — and Steve — and 
Maxime, but in anguish for another. 

Then tidings, sure enough! glad tidings! Mande- 
ville and Maxime safe in camp again and back to duty, 
whole, hale and in the saddle. Their letters came by 
the wasted yellow hands of two or three of the home- 
coming wounded, scores of whom were arriving by 
every south-bound train. From the aide-de-camp 
and the color-bearer came the first whole story of how 
Kincaid, with his picked volunteers, barely a gun de- 
tachment, and with Mandeville, who had brought the 
General’s consent, had stolen noiselessly over the 
water-soaked leaves of a thickety oak wood in the 
earliest glimmer of a rainy dawn and drawn off the 
239 


Kincaid’s Battery 

abandoned gun by hand to its waiting horses; also how, 
when threatened by a hostile patrol, Hilary, Mande- 
ville, Maxime and Charlie had hurried back on foot 
into the wood and hotly checked the pursuit long enough 
for their fellows to mount the team, lay a shoulder to 
every miry wheel and flounder away with the prize. 
But beyond that keen moment when the four, after 
their one volley from ambush, had sprung this way 
and that shouting absurd orders to make-believe men, 
cheering and firing from behind trees, and (cut off 
from their horses) had made for a gully and swamp, 
the two returned ones could tell nothing of the two 
unretumed except that neither of them, dead or alive, 
was anywhere on the ground of the fight or flight as 
they knew it. For days, inside the enemy’s advancing 
lines, they had prowled in ravines and lain in black- 
berry patches and sassafras fence-rows, fed and helped 
on of nights by the beggared yet still warm-hearted 
farm people and getting through at last, but with 
never a trace of Kincaid or Charlie, though after their 
own perilous search they had inquired, inquired, in- 
quired. 

So, wait, said every one and every dumb condition, 
even the miseries of the great gray army, of which 
Anna had mind pictures again, as it toiled through 
mire and lightning, rain, sleet and hail, and as its 
thousands of sick and shattered lay in Corinth dying 
fifty a day. And Flora and Anna waited, though with 
minds placid only to each other and the outer world. 

“Yes,” moaned Anna to Constance, when found at 
dead of night staring Corinthward from a chamber 
window. “Yes, friends advise! All our friends ad- 
240 


Steve— Maxime— Charlie— 

vise! What daring thing did any one ever do who 
waited for friends to advise it ? Does your Steve wait 
for friends to advise? . . . Patience? Ah, lend me 
yours! You don’t need it now. . . . Fortitude? Oh, 
I never had any ! . . . What ? command the courage to 
do nothing when nothing is the only hard thing to do ? 
Who, I ? Connie! I don’t even want it. I’m a craven; 
I want the easy thing! I want to go nurse the box- 
carloads and mule-wagonloads of wounded at Corinth, 
at Okolona and strewed all the way down to Mobile — 
that’s full of them. Hilary may be somewhere among 
them — unidentified! They say he wore no badge 
of rank that morning, you know, and carried the car- 
bine of a wounded cavalryman to whom he had given 
his coat. Oh, he’s mine, Con, and I’m his. We’re 
not engaged, we’re married , and I must go. It’s only 
a step — except in miles — and I’m going! I’m going 
for your sake and Miranda’s. You know you’re stay- 
ing on my account, not for me to settle this bazaar busi- 
ness but to wait for news that’s never coming till I 
go and bring it!” 

This tiny, puny, paltry business of the bazaar — 
the whereabouts of the dagger and its wealth, or of 
the detectives, gone for good into military secret ser- 
vice at the front — she drearily smiled away the whole 
trivial riddle as she lay of nights contriving new searches 
for that inestimable, living treasure, whose perpetual 
“missing,” right yonder “almost in sight from the 
housetop,” was a dagger in her heart. 

And the Valcours? Yes, they, too, had their frantic 
impulses to rise and fly. For Madame, though her 
lean bosom bled for the lost boy, the fiercest pain of 
241 


Kincaid’s Battery 

waiting was that its iron coercion lay in their penury. 
For Flora its sharpest pangs were in her own rage; 
a rage not of the earlier, cold sort against Anna and 
whoever belonged to Anna — that transport had al- 
ways been more than half a joy — but a new, hot rage 
against herself and the finical cheapness of her scheming, 
a rage that stabbed her fair complacency with the 
revelation that she had a heart, and a heart that could 
ache after another. The knife of that rage turned 
in her breast every time she cried to the grandam, 
“We must go!” and that rapacious torment simpered, 
“No funds,” adding sidewise hints toward Anna’s 
jewels, still diligently manoeuvred for, but still some- 
where up-stairs in Callender House, sure to go with 
Anna should Anna go while the manoeuvrers were 
away. 

A long lane to any one, was such waiting, lighted, 
for Anna, only by a faint reflection of that luster of 
big generals’ strategy and that invincibility of the 
Southern heart which, to all New Orleans and even to 
nations beyond seas, clad Dixie’s every gain in light 
and hid her gravest disasters in beguiling shadow. 
But suddenly one day the long lane turned. The 
secret had just leaked out that the forts down the river 
were furiously engaged with the enemy’s mortar-boats 
a few miles below them and that in the past forty- 
eight hours one huge bomb every minute, three thous- 
and in all, had dropped into those forts or burst over 
them, yet the forts were “proving themselves impreg- 
nable.” The lane turned and there stood Charlie. 

There he stood, in the stairway door of the front 
room overlooking Jackson Square. The grandmother 
242 


Steve— Maxime— Charlie— 

and sister had been keenly debating the news and what 
to do about it, the elder bird fierce to stay, the younger 
bent on flight, and had just separated to different win- 
dows, when they heard, turned and beheld him there, 
a stranger in tattered gray and railway dirt, yet their 
own coxcomb boy from his curls to his ill-shod feet. 
Flora had hardly caught her breath or believed her 
eyes before the grandmother was on his neck patting 
and petting his cheeks and head and plying questions 
in three languages : When, where, how, why, how, where 
and when? 

Dimly he reflected their fond demonstrations. No 
gladness was in his face. His speech, as hurried as 
theirs, answered no queries. He asked loftily for air, 
soap, water and the privacy of his own room, and 
when they had followed him there and seen him 
scour face, arms, neck, and head, rub dry and resume 
his jacket and belt, he had grown only more careworn 
and had not yet let his sister’s eyes rest on his. 

He had but a few hours to spend in the city, he said; 
had brought despatches and must carry others back 
by the next train. His story, he insisted, was too long 
to tell before he had delivered certain battery letters; 
one to Victorine, two to Constance Mandeville, and 
so on. Here was one to Flora, from Captain Irby; 
perhaps the story was in it. At any rate, its bearer 
must rush along now. He toppled his “grannie” into 
a rocking-chair and started away. He “would be 
back as soon as ever he ” 

But Flora filled the doorway. He had to harden 
his glance to hers at last. In her breast were acutest 
emotions widely at war, yet in her eyes he saw only an 
243 


Kincaid’s Battery 

unfeeling light, and it was the old woman behind him 
who alone noted how painfully the girl’s fingers were 
pinched upon Irby’s unopened letter. The boy’s 
stare betrayed no less anger than suffering and as 
Flora spoke he flushed. 

“Charlie,” she melodiously began, but his outcry 
silenced her: 

“Now, by the eternal great God Almighty, Flora 
Valcour, if you dare to ask me that — ” He turned to 
the grandmother, dropped to his knees, buried his 
face in her lap and sobbed. 

With genuine tenderness she stroked his locks. 
Yet while she did so she lifted to the sister a face 
lighted up with a mirth of deliverance. To nod, toss, 
and nod again, was poor show for her glee; she smirked 
and writhed to the disdaining girl like a child at a 
mirror, and, though sitting thus confined, gave all the 
effects of jigging over the floor. Hilary out of the way! 
Kincaid eliminated, and the whole question free of him, 
this inheritance question so small and mean to all but 
her and Irby, but to him and her so large, so paramount ! 
Silently, but plainly to the girl, her mouth widely 
motioned, “II est mort! grace” — one hand stopped 
stroking long enough to make merrily the sign of 
cross — “grace au ciel, il est mort l” 

No moment of equal bitterness had Flora Valcour 
ever known. To tell half her distresses would lose 
us in their tangle, midmost in which was a choking 
fury against the man whom unwillingly she loved, for 
escaping her, even by a glorious death. One thought 
alone — that Anna, as truly as if stricken blind, would 
sit in darkness the rest of her days — lightened her 
244 


Steve— Maxime— Charlie— 

torture, and with that thought she smiled a stony 
loathing on the mincing grandam and the boy’s un- 
lifted head. Suddenly, purpose gleamed from her. 
She could not break forth herself, but to escape suffo- 
cation she must and would procure an outburst some- 
where. Measuredly, but with every nerve and tendon 
overstrung, she began to pace the room. 

“Don’t cry, Charlie,” she smoothly said in a voice 
as cold as the crawl of a snake. The brother knew the 
tone, had known it from childhood and the girl, glanc- 
ing back on him, was pleased to see him stiffen. A 
few steps on she added pensively, “For a soldier to 
cry — and befo’ ladies — a ladies’ man — of that batt’rie 
— tha’s hardly fair — to the ladies eh ; grandmama?” 

But the boy only pressed his forehead harder down 
and clutched the aged knees under it till their owner 
put on, to the scintillant beauty, a look of alarm and 
warning. The girl, musingly retracing her calculated 
steps to where the kneeler seemed to clinch himself to 
his posture, halted, stroked with her slippered toe a 
sole of his rude shoes and spoke once more: “Do they 
oft-ten boohoo like that, grandma, those artillerie?” 

The boy whirled up with the old woman clinging. 
A stream of oaths and curses appallingly original 
poured from him, not as through the lips alone but 
from his very eyes and nostrils. That the girl was 
first of all a fool and damned was but a trivial part 
of the cry — of the explosion of his whole year’s mis- 
taken or half-mistaken inferences and smothered in- 
dignation. With equal flatness and blindness he ac- 
cused her of rejoicing in the death of Kincaid: the 
noblest captain (he ramped on) that ever led a battery; 
245 


Kincaid’s Battery 

kindest friend that ever ruled a camp; gayest, hottest, 
daringest fighter of Shiloh’s field; fiercest for man’s 
purity that ever loved the touch of women’s fingers; 
sternest that ever wept on the field of death with the 
dying in his arms; and the scornfullest of promotion 
that ever was cheated of it at headquarters. 

All these extravagances he cursed out, too witless 
to see that this same hero of his was the one human 
being, himself barely excepted, for whose life his sister 
cared. He charged her of never having forgiven 
Hilary for making Anna godmother of their flag, and 
of being in some dark league against him — “hell only 
knew what” — along with that snail of a cousin whom 
everybody but Kincaid himself and the silly old uncle 
knew to be the fallen man’s most venomous foe. 
Throughout the storm the grandmother’s fingers pattered 
soothing caresses, while Flora stood as unruffled by 
his true surmises as by any, a look of cold interest in 
her narrowed eyes, and her whole bodily and spiritual 
frame drinking relief from his transport. Now, while 
he still raged, she tenderly smiled on their trembling 
ancestress. 

“Really, you know grandmama, sometimes me also 
I feel like that, when to smazh the furniture ’t would 
be a delightful — or to wring somebody the neck, yes. 
But for us, and to-day, even to get a li’l’ mad, how is 
that a possibl’?” She turned again, archly, to the 
brother, but flashed in alarm and sprang toward him. 

His arm stiffly held her off. With failing eyes bent 
on the whimpering grandmother he sighed a dis- 
heartened oath and threshed into a chair gasping — ■ 

“My wound — opened again.” 

246 


The School of Suspense 


XLVI 

THE SCHOOL OF SUSPENSE 

Thus it fell to Flora to be letter-bearer and news- 
bearer in her brother’s stead. Yet he had first to be 
cared for by her and the grandmother in a day long 
before “first aid” had become common knowledge. 
The surgeon they had hailed in had taken liberal time 
to show them how, night and morning, to unbandage, 
cleanse and rebind, and to tell them (smiling into the 
lad’s mutinous eyes) that the only other imperative 
need was to keep him flat on his back for ten days. 
Those same weeks of downpour which had given the 
Shiloh campaign two-thirds of its horrors had so overfed 
the monstrous Mississippi that it was running four 
miles an hour, overlapping its levees and heaving up 
through the wharves all along the city’s front, until 
down about the Convent and Barracks and Camp 
Callender there were streets as miry as Corinth. And 
because each and all of these hindrances were welcome 
to Flora as giving leisure to read and reread Irby’s 
long letter about his cousin and uncle, and to plan what 
to say and do in order to reap all the fell moment’s 
advantages, the shadows were long in the Callender’s 
grove when she finally ascended their veranda steps. 

She had come round by way of Victorine’s small, 
tight-fenced garden of crape-myrtles, oleanders and 
pomegranates — where also the water was in the streets, 
backwater from the overflowed swamp-forests be- 
tween city and lake — and had sent her to Charlie’s bed- 
side. Pleasant it would be for us to turn back with the 

247 


Kincaid’s Battery 

damsel and see her. with heart as open as her arms, 
kiss the painted grandam, and at once proceed to make 
herself practically invaluable; or to observe her every 
now and then dazzle her adored patient with a tear- 
gem of joy or pity, or of gratitude that she lived in a 
time when heroic things could happen right at home 
and to the lowliest, even to her; sweet woes like this, 
that let down, for virtuous love, the barriers of hum- 
drum convention. But Flora draws us on, she and 
Anna. As she touched the bell-knob Constance sprang 
out to welcome her, though not to ask her in — till she 
could have a word with her alone, the young wife ex- 
plained. 

“I saw you coming,” she said, drawing her out to 
the balustrade. “You didn’t get Anna’s note of last 
night — too bad! I’ve just found out — her maid for- 
got it! What do you reckon we’ve been doing all day 
long? Packing! We’re going we don’t know where! 
Vicksburg, Jackson, Meridian, Mobile, wherever Anna 
can best hunt Hilary from — and Charlie too, of course.” 

“Yes,” said Flora, one way to the speaker and quite 
another way to herself. 

“Yes, she wants to do it, and Doctor Sevier says 
it’s the only thing for her. Ah, Flora, how well you 
can understand that!” 

“Indeed, yes,” sighed the listener, both ways again. 

“We know how absolutely you believe the city’s 
our best base, else we’d have asked you to go with us.” 
The ever genuine Constance felt a mortifying specious- 
ness in her words and so piled them on. “We know 
the city is best — unless it should fall, and it won’t — 
oh, it won’t, God’s not going to let so many prayers 
248 


The School of Suspense 

go unanswered, Flora! But we’ve tossed reason aside 
and are going by instinct, the way I always feel safest 
in, dear. Ah, poor Anna! Oh, Flora, she’s so sweet 
about it!” 

“Yes? Ab-out what?” 

“You, dear, and whoever is suffering the same ” 

Flora softly winced and Constance blamed herself 
so to have pained another sister’s love. “And she’s 
so quiet,” added the speaker, “but, oh, so pale — and 
so hard either to comfort or encourage, or even to dis- 
courage. There’s nothing you can say that she isn’t 
already heart-sick of saying herself, to herself, and I 
beg you, dear, in your longing to comfort her, please 
don’t bring up a single maybe-this or maybe-that; 
any hope, I mean, founded on a mere doubt.” 

“Ah, but sometime’ the doubt — it is the hope!” 

“Yes, sometimes; but not to her, any more. Oh, 
Flora, if it’s just as true of you, you won’t be — begrudge 
my saying it of my sister — that no saint ever went to 
her matyrdom better prepared than she is, right now, 
for the very worst that can be told. There’s only one 
thing to which she never can and never will resign her- 
self, and that is doubt. She can’t breathe its air, 
Flora. As she says herself, she isn’t so built; she hasn’t 
that gift.” 

The musing Flora nodded compassionately, but 
inwardly she said that, gift or no gift, Anna should 
serve her time in Doubting Castle, with her, Flora, for 
turnkey. Suddenly she put away her abstraction and 
with a summarizing gesture and chastened twinkle 
spoke out: “In short, you want to know for w’at am 
I come.” 


249 


Kincaid’s Battery 


“Flora'” 

“Ah, but, my dear, you are ri-ight. That is 'all 
correct,’ as they say, and one thing I’m come for — ’t 
is — ” She handed out Mandeville’s two letters. 

The wife caught them to her bosom, sprang to her 
tiptoes, beamed on the packet a second time and read 
aloud, “Urbanity of Corporal Valcourl” She heaved 
an ecstatic breath to speak on, but failed. Anna and 
Miranda had joined them and Flora had risen from 
her seat on the balustrade, aware at once that the role 
she had counted on was not to be hers, the role of com- 
forter to an undone rival. 

Pale indeed was the rival, pale as rivalry could wish. 
Yet instantly Flora saw, with a fiery inward sting, 
how beautiful pallor may be. And more she saw. 
with the chagrin then growing so common on every 
armed front — the chagrin of finding one’s foe en- 
trenched — she saw how utterly despair had failed to 
crush a gentle soul. Under cover of affliction’s night 
and storm Anna, this whole Anna Callender, had been 
reinforced, had fortified and was a new problem. 

She greeted Flora with a welcoming beam, but be- 
fore speaking she caught her sister’s arm and glanced 
herself, at the superscription. 

“Floral” she softly cried, “oh, Flora Valcour! has 
your brother — your Charlie! — come home alive and 
well? — What; no? — No, he has not?” 

The visitor was shaking her head: “No. Ah, no! 
home, yes, and al-ive; but ” 

“Oh, Flora, Flora! alive and at home! home and 
alive!” While the words came their speaker slowly 
folded her arms about the bearer of tidings, and with 
250 


From the Burial Squad 

a wholly unwonted strength pressed her again to the 
rail and drew bosom to bosom, still exclaiming, “Alive! 
alive! Oh, whatever his plight, be thankful, Flora, for 
so much! Alive enough to come home!” 

XL VII 

FROM THE BURIAL SQUAD 

The pinioned girl tried to throw back her head 
and bring their eyes together, but Anna, through some 
unconscious advantage, held it to her shoulder, her 
own face looking out over the garden. 

“Ah, let me be glad for you, Flora, let me be glad 
for you! Oh, think of it! You have him! have him 
at home, to look upon, to touch, to call by name ! and 
to be looked upon by him and touched and called by 
name! Oh, God in heaven! God in heaven!” 

Miranda’s fond protests were too timorous to check 
her, and Flora’s ceased in the delight of hearing that 
last wail confess the thought of Hilary. Constance 
strove with tender energy for place and voice: “Nan, 
dearie, Nan! But listen to Flora, Nan. See, Nan, 
I haven’t opened Steve’s letter yet. Wounded and 
what, Flora, something worse ? Ah, if worse you 
couldn’t have left him.” 

“I know,” sighed Anna, relaxing her arms to a caress 
and turning her gaze to Flora. “I see. Your brother, 
our dear Charlie, has come back to life, but wounded 
and alone. Alone. Hilary is still missing. Isn’t that 
it? That’s all, isn’t it?” 

Constance, in a sudden thought of what her letters 

251 


Kincaid’s Battery 

might tell, began to open one, though with her eyes at 
every alternate moment on Flora as eagerly as Miranda’s 
or Anna’s. Flora stood hiddenly revelling in that com- 
plexity of her own spirit which enabled her to pour 
upon her questioner a look, even a real sentiment, of 
ravishing pity, while nevertheless in the depths of her 
being she thrilled and burned and danced and sang 
with joy for the very misery she thus compassionated. 
By a designed motion she showed her grandmother’s 
reticule on her arm. But only Anna saw it; Constance, 
with her gaze in the letter, was drawing Miranda aside 
while both bent their heads over a clause in it which 
had got blurred, and looked at each other aghast as they 
made it out to read, “ ‘ — from the burial squad.’ ” The 
grandmother’s silken bag saved them from Anna’s notice. 

“Oh, Flora!” said Anna again, “is there really 
something worse?” Abruptly, she spread a hand 
under the bag and with her eyes still in the eyes of its 
possessor slid it gently from the yielding wrist. Drop- 
ping her fingers into it she brought forth a tobacco- 
pouch, of her own embroidering, and from it, while 
the reticule fell unheeded to the floor, drew two or 
three small things which she laid on it in her doubled 
hands and regarded with a smile. Vacantly the smile 
increased as she raised it to Flora, then waned while 
she looked once more on the relics, and grew again as 
she began to handle them. Her slow voice took the 
tone of a child alone at play. 

“Why, that’s my photograph,” she said. “And 
this — this is his watch — watch and chain.” She 
dangled them. A light frown came and went between 
her smiles. 


252 


From the Burial Squad 

With soft eagerness Flora called Constance, and the 
sister and Miranda stood dumb. 

“See, Connie,” the words went on, “see, ‘Randa, 
this is my own photograph, and this is his own watch 
and chain. I must go and put them away — with 
my old gems.” Constance would have followed her 
as she moved but she waved a limp forbiddal, prattling 
on: “This doesn’t mean he’s dead, you know. Oh, 
not at all! It means just the contrary! Why, I saw 
him alive last night, in a dream, and I can’t believe 
anything else, and I won’t! No, no, not yet!” At 
that word she made a misstep and as she started sharply 
to recover it the things she carried fell breaking and 
jingling at her feet. 

“Oh-h!” she sighed in childish surprise and feebly 
dropped to her knees. Flora, closest by, sprang 
crouching to the rescue, but recoiled as the kneeling 
girl leaned hoveringly over the mementos and with dis- 
tended eyes and an arm thrust forward cried aloud, 
“No! No! No-o!” 

At once, however, her voice was tender again. 
“Mustn’t anybody touch them but me, ever any more,” 
she said, regathering the stuff, regained her feet and 
moved on. Close after her wavering steps anxiously 
pressed the others, yet not close enough. At the open 
door, smiling back in rejection of their aid, she tripped, 
and before they could save her, tumbled headlong 
within. From up-stairs, from down-stairs came ser- 
vants running, and by the front door entered a stranger, 
a private soldier in swamp boots and bespattered with 
the mire of the river road from his spurs to his ragged hat. 

“No, bring her out,” he said to a slave woman 
253 


Kincaid’s Battery 

who bore Anna in her arms, “out to the air!” But the 
burden slipped free and with a cleared mind stood facing 
him. 

“Ladies,” he exclaimed, his look wandering, his 
uncovered hair matted, “if a half-starved soldier can 
have a morsel of food just to take in his hands and 
ride on with — ” and before he could finish servants 
had sprung to supply him. 

“Are you from down the river?” asked Anna, 
quietly putting away her sister’s pleading touch and 
Flora’s offer of support. 

“I am!” spouted the renegade, for renegade he 
was, “I’m from the very thick of the massacre! from 
day turned into night, night into day, and heaven and 
earth into — into ” 

“Hell,” placidly prompted Flora. 

“Yes! nothing short of it! Our defenses become 
death-traps and slaughter-pens — oh, how foully, foully 
has Richmond betrayed her sister city!” 

Flora felt a new tumult of joy. “That Yankee 
fleet — it has pazz’ those fort’?” she cried. 

“My dear young lady! By this time there ain’t no 
forts for it to pass! When I left Fort St. Philip there 
wa’n’t a spot over in Fort Jackson as wide as my 
blanket where a bumbshell hadn’t buried itself and 
blown up, and every minute we were lookin’ for the 
magazine to go! Those awful shells! they’d torn both 
levees, the forts were flooded, men who’d lost their grit 
were weeping like children ” 

“Oh!” interrupted Constance, “why not leave the 
forts? We don’t need them now; those old wooden 
ships can never withstand our terrible ironclads!” 

254 


From the Burial Squad 

“Well, they’re mighty soon going to try it! Last 
night, right in the blaze of all our batteries, they cut 
the huge chain we had stretched across the river ” 

“Ah, but when they see — oh, they’ll never dare 
face even the Manassas — the -little turtle,’ ha-ha! — 
much less the great Louisiana!” 

“Alas! madam, the Louisiana ain’t ready for ’em. 
There she lies tied to the levee, with engines that can’t 
turn a wheel, a mere floating battery, while our gun- 
boats — Eagerly the speaker broke off to receive 
upon one hand and arm the bounty of the larder and 
with a pomp of gratitude to extend his other hand to 
Anna; but she sadly shook her head and showed on 
her palms Hilary’s shattered tokens: 

“These poor things belong to one, sir, who, like 
you, is among the missing. But, oh, thank God! he 
is missing at the front, in the front.” 

The abashed craven turned his hand to Flora, but 
with a gentle promptness Anna stepped between: 
“No, Flora dear, see; he hasn’t a red scratch on him. 
Oh, sir, go — eat! If hunger stifles courage, eat! But 
eat as you ride, and ride like mad back to duty and 
honor! No! not under this roof — nor in sight of these 
things — can any man be a ladies’ man, who is missing 
from the front, at the rear.” 

He wheeled and vanished. Anna turned: “Connie, 
what do your letters say?” 

The sister’s eyes told enough. The inquirer gazed 
a moment, then murmured to herself, “I — don’t — 
believe it — yet,” grew very white, swayed, and sank 
with a long sigh into out-thrown arms. 


255 


Kincaid’s Battery 


XL VIII 

FARRAGUT 

The cathedral clock struck ten of the night. Yonder 
its dial shone, just across that quarter of Jackson Square 
nearest the Valcours’ windows, getting no response 
this time except the watchman’s three taps of his iron- 
shod club on corner curbstones. 

An hour earlier its toll had been answered from 
near and far, up and down the long, low-roofed, curv- 
ing and recurving city — “seven, eight, nine” — “eight, 
nine” — the law’s warning to all slaves to be indoors 
or go to jail. Not Flora nor Anna nor Victorine nor 
Doctor Sevier nor Dick Smith’s lone mother nor any 
one else among all those thousands of masters, mis- 
tresses and man- and maid-servants, or these thousands 
of home-guards at home under their mosquito-bars, 
with uniforms on bedside chairs and with muskets and 
cartridge-belts close by — not one of all these was 
aware, I say, that however else this awful war might 
pay its cost, it was the knell of slavery they heard, and 
which they, themselves, in effect, were sounding. 

Lacking wilder excitement Madame sat by a lamp 
knitting a nubia. Victorine had flown home at sun- 
down. Charlie lay sleeping as a soldier lad can. His 
sister had not yet returned from Callender House, 
but had been fully accounted for some time before by 
messenger. Now the knitter heard horses and wheels. 
Why should they come at a walk ? It was like stealth. 
They halted under the balcony. She slipped out and 
peered down. Yes, there was Flora. Constance was with 
256 


Farragut 

her. Also two trim fellows whom she rightly guessed 
to be Camp Callender lads, and a piece of luggage— 
was it not? — which, as they lifted it down, revealed a 
size and weight hard even for those siege-gunners to 
handle with care. Unseen, silently, they came in and up 
with it, led by Flora. (Camp Callender was now only 
a small hither end of the “ Chalmette Batteries, ,, which 
on both sides of the river mounted a whole score of big 
black guns. No wonder the Callenders were leaving.) 

Presently here were the meriy burden-bearers be- 
hind their radiant guide, whispered ah’s and oh’s 
and wary laughter abounding. 

“‘Such a getting up-stairs I never did see!’” 

A thousand thanks to the boys as they set down their 
load; their thanks back for seats declined; no time 
even to stand; a moment, only, for new vows of secrecy. 
“Oui! — Ah, non! — Assur&nent!” (They were Cre- 
oles.) “Yes, mum ’t is the word! And such a so- 
quiet getting down-stair’!” — to Mrs. Mandeville again 
— and trundling away! 

When the church clock gently mentioned the half- 
hour the newly gleeful graadam and hiddenly tortured 
girl had been long enough together and alone for the 
elder to have nothing more to ask as to this chest of 
plate which the Callenders had fondly accepted Flora’s 
offer to keep for them while they should be away. 
Not for weeks and weeks had the old lady felt such ease 
of mind on the money — and bread — question. Now 
the two set about to get the booty well hid before 
Charlie should awake. This required the box to be 
emptied, set in place and reladen, during which proc- 
ess Flora spoke only when stung. 

257 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“Ah!” thinly piped she of the mosquito voice, “what 
a fine day tha’s been, to-day!” but won no reply. 
Soon she cheerily whined again : 

“All day nothing but good luck, and at the end — 
this!” (the treasure chest). 

But Flora kept silence. 

“So, now, said the aged one, “they will not make 
such a differenze, those old jewel’.” 

“I will get them yet,” murmured the girl. 

“You think? Me, I think no, you will never.” 

No response. 

The tease pricked once more: “Ah! all that day I 
am thinking of that Irbee. I am glad for Irbee. He 
is ‘the man that waits,’ that Irbee!” 

The silent one winced; fiercely a piece of the shining 
ware was lifted high, but it sank again. The painted 
<dder cringed. There may have been genuine peril, 
but the one hot sport in her fag end of a life was to play 
with this beautiful fire. She held the girl’s eye with a 
look of frightened admiration, murmuring, “You are 
a merveilleusel ” 

“Possible?” 

“Yes, to feel that way and same time to be ab’e to 
smile like that!” 

“Ah? how is that I’m feeling?” 

“You are filling that all this, and all those jewel’ 
of Anna, and the life of me, and of that boy in yond’, 
you would give them all, juz’ to be ab’e to bil-ieve 
that foolishness of Anna — that he’s yet al-live, that 
Kin ” 

The piece of plate half rose again, but — in part 
because the fair threatener could not help enjoying 
258 


Farragut 

the subtlety of the case — the smile persisted as she 
rejoined, “Ah! when juz’ for the fun, all I can get 
the chance, I’m making her to bil-ieve that way!” 

“Yes,” laughed the old woman, “but why? Only 
biccause that way you, you cannot bil-ieve.” 

The lithe maiden arose to resume their task, the 
heavy silver still in her hand. The next moment the 
kneeling grandam crouched and the glittering metal 
swept around just high enough to miss her head. A 
tinkle of mirth came from its wielder as she moved 
on with it, sighing, “Ah! ho! what a pity — that so 
seldom the aged commit suicide.” 

“Yes,” came the soft retort, “but for yo’ young 
grandmama tha’z not yet the time, she is still a so 
indispensib’.” 

“Very true, ma chbre,” sang Flora, “and in heaven 
you would be so uzeless.” 

Out in the hazy, dark, heavily becalmed night the 
clock tolled eleven. Eleven — one — three — and all the 
hours, halves and quarters between and beyond, it 
tolled; and Flora, near, and Anna, far, sometimes 
each by her own open window, heard and counted. 
A thin old moon was dimly rising down the river 
when each began to think she caught another and 
very different sound that seemed to arrive faint from 
a long journey out of the southeast, if really from any- 
where, and to pulse in dim persistency as soft as 
breathing, but as constant. Likely enough it was 
only the rumble of a remote storm and might have 
seemed to come out of the north or west had their win- 
dows looked that way, for still the tempestuous rains 
were frequent and everywhere, and it was easy and 
259 


Kincaid’s Battery 

common for man to mistake God’s thunderings for 
his own. 

Yet, whether those two wakeful maidens truly 
heard or merely fancied, in fact just then some seventy 
miles straight away under that gaunt old moon, there 
was rising to heaven the most terrific uproar this 
delta land had ever heard since man first moved upon 
its shores and waters. Six to the minute bellowed 
and soared Porter’s awful bombs and arched and 
howled and fell and scattered death and conflagration. 
While they roared, three hundred and forty great guns 
beside, on river and land, flashed and crashed, the 
breezeless night by turns went groping-black and clear- 
as-day red with smoke and flame of vomiting funnels, 
of burning boats and fire-rafts, of belching cannon, of 
screaming grape and canister and of exploding maga- 
zines. And through the middle of it all, in single file — 
their topmasts, yards, and cordage showing above the 
murk as pale and dumb as skeletons at every flare of 
the havoc, a white light twinkling at each masthead, a 
red light at the peak and the stars and stripes there with 
it — Farragut and his wooden ships came by the forts. 

“Boys, our cake’s all dough!” said a commander in 
one of the forts. 

When day returned and Anna and Flora slept, the 
murmur they had heard may after all have been only 
God’s thunder and really not from the southeast; but 
just down there under the landscape’s flat rim both 
forts, though with colors still gallantly flying, were smok- 
ing ruins, all Dixie’s brave gunboats and rams lay along 
the river’s two shores, sunken or burned, and the whole 
victorious Northern fleet, save one boat rammed and 
260 


A City in Terror 

gone to the bottom, was on its cautious, unpiloted 
way, snail-slow but fate-sure, up the tawny four-mile 
current and round the gentle green bends of the Missis- 
sippi with New Orleans for its goal and prey. 

XLIX 

A CITY IN TERROR 

Before the smart-stepping lamplighters were half 
done turning off the street lights, before the noisy 
market-houses all over the town, from Camp Callender 
to Carrollton, with their basket-bearing thousands of 
jesting and dickering customers, had quenched their 
gaslights and candles to dicker and jest by day, or 
the devotees of early mass had emerged from the 
churches, Rumor was on the run. With a sort of 
muffled speed and whisper she came and went, crossed 
her course and reaffirmed herself, returned to her 
starting-point and stole forth again, bearing ever the 
same horrid burden, brief, persistent, unexaggerated: 
The Foe! The Foe! In five great ships and twice 
as many lesser ones — counted at Quarantine Station 
just before the wires were cut — the Foe was hardly 
twenty leagues away, while barely that many guns of 
ours crouched between his eight times twenty and our 
hundred thousand women and children. 

Yet, for a brief spell, so deep are the ruts of habit, 
the city kept to its daily routine, limp and unmean- 
ing though much of it had come to be. The milkman, 
of course, held to his furious round in his comical two- 
wheeled cart, whirling up to alley gates, shouting and 
261 


Kincaid’s Battery 

ringing his big hand-bell. In all his tracks followed 
the hooded bread-cart, with its light-weight loaves for 
worthless money and with only the staggering news for 
lagnappe. Families ate breakfast, one hour and an- 
other, wherever there was food. Day cabmen and 
draymen trotted off to their curbstones; women turned to 
the dish-pan, the dust-pan, the beds, the broom; porters, 
clerks and merchants — the war-mill’s wasteful refuse 
and residuum, some as good as the gray army’s best, 
some poor enough — went to their idle counters, desks 
and sidewalks; the children to the public schools, the 
beggar to the church doorstep, physicians to their sick, 
the barkeeper to his mirrors and mint, and the pot- 
fisher to his catfish lines in the swollen, sweeping, 
empty harbor. 

But besides the momentum of habit there was the 
official pledge to the people — Mayor Monroe’s and 
Commanding-General Lovell’s — that if they would 
but keep up this tread-mill gait, the moment the city 
was really in danger the wires of the new fire-alarm 
should strike the tidings from all her steeples. So 
the school teachers read Scripture and prayers and the 
children sang the “Bonnie Blue Flag,” while outside 
the omnibuses trundled, the one-mule street-cars 
tinkled and jogged and the bells hung mute. 

Nevertheless a change was coming. Invisibly it 
worked in the general mind as that mind gradually 
took in the meanings of the case; but visibly it showed 
as, from some outpost down the river, General Lovell, 
(a sight to behold for the mud on him), came spurring 
at full speed by Callender House, up through the Creole 
Quarter and across wide Canal Street to the St. Charles. 

262 


A City in Terror 

Now even more visibly it betrayed itself, where all 
through the heart of the town began aides, couriers 
and frowning adjutants to gallop from one significant 
point to another. Before long not a cab anywhere 
waited at its stand. Every one held an officer or two, 
if only an un-uniformed bank-officer or captain of police, 
and rattled up or down this street and that, taking 
comers at breakneck risks. That later the drays 
began to move was not so noticeable, for a dray was 
but a dray and they went off empty except for their 
drivers and sometimes a soldier with a musket and did 
not return. Moreover, as they went there began to be 
seen from the middle of almost any cross-street, in 
the sky out over the river front, here one, there another, 
yonder a third and fourth, upheaval of dense, unusual 
smoke, first on the hither side of the harbor, then on 
the far side, yet no fire-engines, hand or steam, rushed 
that way, nor any alarm sounded. 

From the Valcours’ balcony Madame, gasping for 
good air after she and Flora had dressed Charlie’s 
wound, was startled to see one of those black columns 
soar aloft. But it was across the river, and she had 
barely turned within to mention it, when up the stair 
and in upon the three rushed Victorine, all tears, saying 
it was from the great dry-dock at Slaughter-House 
Point, which our own authorities had set afire. 

The enfeebled Charlie half started from his rocking- 
chair laughing angrily. “ Incredible!” he cried, but 
sat mute as the girl’s swift tongue told the half-dozen 
other dreadful things she had just beheld on either 
side the water. The sister and grandmother sprang 
into the balcony and stood astounded. Out of the nar- 
263 


Kincaid’s Battery 

row streets beneath them — Chartres, Conde, St. Peter, 
St. Ann, Cathedral Alley— scores and scores of rapidly 
walking men and women and scampering boys and girls 
streamed round and through the old Square by every 
practicable way and out upon the levee. 

“Incredib’!” retorted meanwhile the pouting daugh- 
ter of Maxime, pressing into the balcony after Flora. 
‘‘Hah! and look yondah another incredib’ l” She 
pointed riverward across the Square. 

“Charlie, you must not!” cried Flora, returning 
half into the room. 

“Bah!” retorted the staggering boy, pushed out 
among them and with profane mutterings stood agaze. 

Out across the Square and the ever-multiplying 
flow of people through and about it, and over the roof 
of the French Market close beyond, the rigging of a 
moored ship stood pencilled on the sky. It had long 
been a daily exasperation to his grandmother’s vision, 
being (unknown to Charlie or Victorine), the solitary 
winnings of Flora’s privateering venture, early sold, 
you will remember, but, by default of a buyer, still in 
some share unnegotiably hers and — in her own and 
the grandmother’s hungry faith — sure to command 
triple its present value the moment the fall of the city 
should open the port. Suddenly the old lady wheeled 
upon Flora with a frantic look, but was checked by 
the granddaughter’s gleaming eyes and one inaudible, 
visible word: “Hush!” 

The gazing boy saw only the ship. “Oh, great 
Lord!” he loathingly drawled, “is it Damned Fools’ 
Day again?” Her web of cordage began to grow 
dim in a rising smoke, and presently a gold beading 
264 


A City in Terror 

of fire ran up and along every rope and spar and clung 
quivering. Soon the masts commenced, it seemed, to 
steal nearer to each other, and the vessel swung out 
from her berth and started down the wide, swift river, 
a mass of flames. 

“Oh, Mother of God,” cried Victorine with a new 
gush of tears! “’ave mercy upon uz women!” and in 
the midst of her appeal the promised alarum began 
to toll — here, yonder, and far away — here, yonder, and 
far away — and did not stop until right in the middle 
of the morning it had struck twelve. 

“Good-by! poor betrayed New Orleans!” exclaimed 
Charlie, turning back into the room. “Good-by, 
sweetheart, I’m off! Good-by, grannie — Flo’!” 

The three followed in with cries of amazement, dis- 
tress, indignation, command, reproach, entreaty, all 
alike vain. As if the long-roll of his own brigade 
were roaring to him, he strode about the apartment 
preparing to fly. 

His sister tried to lay preventing hands on him, say- 
ing? “Your life! your life! you are throwing it away!* 

“Well, what am I in Kincaid’s Battery for?” he 
retorted, with a sweep of his arm that sent her stag- 
gering. He caught the younger girl by the shoulders: 
“Jularkie, if you want to go, too, with or without 
grannie and Flo’, by Jove, come along! I’ll take care 
of you!” 

The girl’s eyes melted with yearning, but the response 
was Flora’s: “Simpleton! When you have n’ the 
sense enough to take care of yourself!” 

“Ah, shame!” ventured the sweetheart. “He’s the 
lover of his blidding country, going ag-ain to fighd 
265 


Kincaid’s Battery 

for her — and uz — whiles he can! — to-day! — al-lone! 
— now!” Her fingers clutched his wrists, that still 
held her shoulders, and all her veins surged in the 
rapture of his grasp. 

But Charlie stared at his sister. It could not enter 
his mind that her desires were with the foe, yet his voice 
went deep in scorn : “ And have you too turned coward ? ” 

The taunt stung. Its victim flashed, but in the 
next breath her smile was clemency itself as she drew 
Victorine from him and shot her neat reply, well know- 
ing he would never guess the motives behind it — the 
bow whence flew the shaft: the revenge she owed the 
cause that had burned their home; her malice against 
Anna; the agony of losing him they now called dead 
and buried; the new, acute loathing that issued from 
that agony upon the dismal Irby; her baffled hunger 
for the jewels; her plans for the chest of plate; hopes 
vanishing in smoke with yonder burning ship; thought 
of Greenleaf’s probable return with the blue army, 
of the riddles that return might make, and of the ruin, the 
burning and sinking riot and ruin, these things were 
making in her own soul as if it, too, were a city lost. 

“Charlie,” she said, “you ’ave yo’ fight. Me, I 
’ave mine. Here is grandma. Ask her — if my fight 
— of every day — for you and her — and not yet finish’ 
— would not eat the last red speck of courage out of 
yo’ blood.” 

She turned to Victorine: “Oh, he’s brave! He ’as 
all that courage to go, in that condition! Well, we 
three women, we ’ave the courage to let him go and 
ourselve’ to stay. But — Charlie! take with you the 
Callender’! Yes! You, you can protec’ them, same 
266 


Anna Amazes Herself 

time they can take care of you. Stop! — Grandma!— 
yo’ bonnet and gaiter’ t All three, Victorine, we will 
help them, all four, get away!” 

On the road to Callender House, while Charlie and 
Victorine palavered together — “I cannot quite make 
out,” minced the French-speaking grandmother to 
Flora, “the real reason why you are doing this.” 

“’T is with me the same!” eagerly responded the 
beauty, in the English she preferred. “I thing maybe 
’t is juz inspiration. What you thing?” 

“I? I am afraid it is only your great love for Anna 
— making you a trifle blind.” 

The eyes of each rested in the other’s after the 
manner we know and the thought passed between 
them, that if further news was yet to come of the lost 
artillerist, any soul-reviving news, it would almost 
certainly come first to New Orleans and from the 
men in blue. 

“No,” chanted the granddaughter, “I can’t tell 
what is making me do that unlezz my guardian angel!” 

L 

ANNA AMAZES HERSELF 

Once more the Carrollton Gardens. 

Again the afternoon hour, the white shell-paved 
court, its two playing fountains, the roses, lilies, jas- 
mines and violets, their perfume spicing all the air, 
and the oriole and mocking-bird enrapturing it with 
their songs, although it was that same dire twenty- 
fourth of April of which we have been telling. Town- 
267 


Kincaid’s Battery 

ward across the wide plain the distant smoke of suicidal 
conflagration studded the whole great double crescent 
of the harbor. Again the slim railway, its frequent 
small trains from the city clanging round the flowery 
miles of its half-circle, again the highway on either 
side the track, and again on the highway, just reach- 
ing the gardens, whose dashing coach and span, but 
the Callenders’? 

Dashing was the look of it, not its speed. Sedately it 
came. Behind it followed a team of four giant mules, 
a joy to any quartermaster’s vision, drawing a planta- 
tion wagon filled with luggage. On the old coach- 
man’s box sat beside him a slave maid, and in the 
carriage the three Callenders and Charlie. Anna and 
Miranda were on the rear seat and for the wounded boy’s 
better ease his six-shooter lay in Anna’s lap. A brave 
animation in the ladies was only the more prettily set 
off by a pinkness of earlier dejection about their eyes. 
Abreast the gate they halted to ask an armed sentry 
whether the open way up the river coast was through 
the gardens or 

He said there was no longer any open way without 
a pass from General Lovell, and when they affably 
commended the precaution and showed a pass he 
handed it to an officer, a heated, bustling, road-soiled 
young Creole, who had ridden up at the head of a 
mounted detail. This youth, as he read it, shrugged. 
‘‘Under those present condition’,” he said, with a wide 
gesture toward the remote miles of blazing harbor, 
{ ‘he could not honor a pazz two weeks ole. They 
would ’ave to rit-urn and get it renew’.” 

“ Oh ! how ? How hope to do so in all yonder chaos ? 

268 


Anna Amazes Herself 

And how! oh, how! could an army — in full retreat- 
leaving women and wounded soldiers to the mercy of 
a ravening foe — compel them to remain in the city it 
was itself evacuating?” A sweet and melodious 
dignity was in all the questions, but eyes shone, brows 
arched, lips hung apart and bonnet-feathers and hat- 
feathers, capes and flounces, seemed to ruffle wider, 
with consternation and hurt esteem. 

The officer could not explain a single how. He 
could do no more than stubbornly regret that the ques- 
tioners must even return by train, the dread exigencies 
of the hour compelling him to impress these horses for 
one of his guns and those mules for his battery-wagon. 

Anna’s three companions would have sprung to 
their feet but in some way her extended hand stayed 
them. A year earlier Charlie would have made sad 
mistakes here, but now he knew the private soldier’s 
helplessness before the gold bars of commission, and 
his rage was white and dumb, as, with bursting eyes, 
he watched the officer pencil a blank. 

“ Don’t write that, sir,” said a clear voice, and the 
writer, glancing up, saw Anna standing among the 
seated three. Her face was drawn with distress and 
as pale as Charlie’s, but Charlie’s revolver was in her 
hand, close to her shoulder, pointed straight upward at 
full cock, and the hand was steady. “ Those mules 
first,” she spoke on, “and then we, sir, are going to 
turn round and go home. Whatever our country needs 
of us we will give, not sell; but we will not, in her 
name, be robbed on the highway, sir, and I will put a 
ball through the head of the first horse or mule you 
lay a hand on. Isaac, turn your team.” 

269 


Kincaid’s Battery 

Unhindered, the teamster, and then the coachman, 
turned and drove. Back toward, and by and by, into 
the vast woe-stricken town they returned in the 
scented airs and athwart the long shadows of that same 
declining sun which fourteen years before — or was it 
actually but fourteen months? — had first gilded the 
splendid maneuverings of Kincaid’s Battery. The 
tragi-comic rencounter just ended had left the three 
ladies limp, gay, and tremulous, with Anna aghast 
at herself and really wondering between spells of shame 
and fits of laughter what had happened to her reason. 

With his pistol buckled on again, Charlie had only 
a wordy wrath for the vanished officer, and grim wor- 
ship of Anna, while Constance and Miranda, behind 
a veil of mirthful recapitulations, tenderly rejoiced in 
the relief of mind and heart which the moment had 
brought to her who had made it amazing. And now 
the conditions around them in streets, homes, and marts 
awoke sympathies in all the four, which further eased 
their own distresses. 

The universal delirium of fright and horror had 
passed. Through all the city’s fevered length and 
breadth, in the belief that the victorious ships, repairing 
the lacerations of battle as they came, were coming so 
slowly that they could not arrive for a day or two, and 
that they were bringing no land forces with them, thou- 
sands had become rationally, desperately busy for flight. 
Everywhere hacks, private carriages, cabs, wagons, 
light and heavy, and carts, frail or strong, carts for 
bread or meat, for bricks or milk, were bearing fugi- 
tives — old men, young mothers, grandmothers, maidens 
and children — with their trunks, bales, bundles, slaves 
270 


Anna Amazes Herself 

and provisions — toward the Jackson Railroad to board 
the first non-military train they could squeeze into, 
and toward the New and Old Basins to sleep on 
schooner decks under the open stars in the all-night 
din of building deckhouses. Many of them were 
familiar acquaintances and chirruped good-by to the 
Callenders. Passes? No trouble whatever! Charlie 
need only do this and that and so and so, and there 
you were! 

But Charlie was by this time so nervously spent 
and in such pain that the first thing must be to get 
him into bed again — at Callender House, since noth- 
ing could induce him to let sister, sweetheart or grand- 
mother know he had not got away. To hurt his pride 
the more, in every direction military squads with bay- 
onets fixed were smartly fussing from one small domi- 
cile to another, hustling out the laggards and march- 
ing them to encampments on the public squares. 
Other squads — of the Foreign Legion, appointed to 
remain behind in “armed neutrality 5 7 — patroled the 
sidewalks strenuously, preserving order wfith a high 
hand. Down this street drums roared, fifes squealed 
and here passed yet another stately regiment on toward 
and now into and down, Calliope Street, silent as the 
rabble it marched through, to take train for Camp 
Moore in the Mississippi hills. 

“Good Lord!” gasped Charlie, “if that isn’t the 
Confederate Guards! Oh, what good under heaven 
can those old chaps do at the front?”— the very thing 
the old chaps were asking themselves. 


271 


Kincaid’s Battery 


LI 

THE CALLENDER HORSES ENLIST 

Mere mind should ever be a most reverent servant 
to the soul. But in fact, and particularly in hours 
stately with momentous things, what a sacrilegious 
trick it has of nagging its holy mistress with trifles 
light as air — small as gnats yet as pertinacious. * 

To this effect, though written with a daintier pen, 
were certain lines but a few hours old, that twenty- 
fourth of April, in a diary which through many months 
had received many entries since the one that has already 
told us of its writer paired at Doctor Sevier’s dinner- 
party with a guest now missing, and of her hearing, 
in the starlight with that guest, the newsboys’ cry that 
his and her own city’s own Beauregard had opened fire 
on Fort Sumter and begun this war — which now behold i 
Of this droll impishness of the mind, even in this 
carriage to-day, with these animated companions, and 
in all this tribulation, ruin, and flight, here was a harry- 
ing instance: that every minute or two, whatever the 
soul’s outer preoccupation or inner anguish, there 
would, would, would return, return and return the 
doggerel words and swaggering old tune of that song 
abhorred by the gruff General, but which had first 
awakened the love of so many hundreds of brave men 
for its brave, gay singer now counted forever lost : 

“Ole malls’ love’ wine, ole mis’ love’ silk ” 

Generally she could stop it there, but at times it 
contrived to steal unobserved through the second line 
272 


The Callender Horses Enlist 

and then no power could keep it from marching on to 
the citadel, the end of the refrain. Base, antic awak- 
ener of her heart’s dumb cry of infinite loss! For 
every time the tormenting inanity won its way, that 
other note, that unvoiced agony, hurled itself against 
the bars of its throbbing prison. 

“Ole mahs’ love’ wine, ole mis’ love’ ” 

“Oh, Hilary, my Hilary!” 

From the Creole Quarter both carriage and wagon 
turned to the water front. Charlie’s warning that even 
more trying scenes would be found there was in vain. 
Anna insisted, the fevered youth’s own evident wish 
was to see the worst, and Constance and Miranda, 
dutifully mirthful, reminded him that through Anna 
they also had now tasted blood. As the equipage 
came out upon the Levee and paused to choose a way, 
the sisters sprang up and gazed abroad, sustaining 
each other by their twined arms. 

To right, to left, near and far — only not just here 
where the Coast steamboats landed — the panorama 
was appalling. All day Anna had hungered for some 
incident or spectacle whose majesty or terror would 
suffice to distract her from her own desolation; but 
here it was made plain to her that a distress before 
which hand and speech are helpless only drives the 
soul in upon its own supreme devotion and woe. One 
wide look over those far flat expanses of smoke and 
flame answered the wonder of many hours, as to where 
all the drays and floats of the town had gone and 
what they could be doing. Along the entire sinuous 
riverside the whole great blockaded seaport’s choked- in 
273 


Kincaid’s Battery 


stores of tobacco and cotton, thousands of hogsheads, 
ten thousands of bales — lest they enrich the enemy — 
were being hauled to the wharves and landings and 
were just now beginning to receive the torch, the wharves 
also burning, and boats and ships on either side of 
the river being fired and turned adrift. 

Yet all the more because of the scene, a scene that 
quelled even the haunting strain of song, that other note, 
that wail which, the long day through, had writhed 
unreleased in her bosom, rose, silent still, yet only the 
stronger and more importunate 

“Oh, Hilary, my soldier, my flag’s, my country’s 
defender, come back to me — here! — now! — my yet liv- 
ing hero, my Hilary Kincaid!” 

Reluctantly, she let Constance draw her down, and 
presently, in a voice rich with loyal pride, as the carriage 
moved on, bade Charlie and Miranda observe that only 
things made contraband by the Richmond Congress 
were burning, while all the Coast Landing’s wealth 
of Louisiana foodstuffs, in barrels and hogsheads, 
bags and tierces, lay unharmed. Yet not long could 
their course hold that way, and 



“Ole malls’ love’ wine, ole — ” 

it was Anna who first proposed retreat. The very 
havoc was fascinating and the courage of Constance 
and Miranda, though stripped of its mirth, remained 
undaunted; but the eye-torture of the cotton smoke 
was enough alone to drive them back to the inner 
streets. 


274 


The Callender Horses Enlist 

Here the direction of their caravan, away from all 
avenues of escape, no less than their fair faces, drew 
the notice of every one, while to the four themselves 
every busy vehicle — where none was idle, — every 
sound remote or near, every dog in search of his master, 
and every man — how few the men had become! — 
every man, woman or child, alone or companioned, 
overladen or empty-handed, hurrying out of gates or 
into doors, standing to stare or pressing intently or 
distractedly on, calling, jesting, scolding or weeping — 
and how many wept! — bore a new, strange interest of 
fellowship. So Callender House came again to view, 
oh, how freshly, dearly, appealingly beautiful! As 
the Callender train drew into its gate and grove, the car- 
riage was surrounded, before it could reach the veranda 
steps, by a full dozen of household slaves, male and 
female, grown, half-grown, clad and half-clad, some 
grinning, some tittering, all overjoyed, yet some in 
tears. There had been no such gathering at the de- 
parture. To spare the feelings of the mistresses the 
dominating “mammy” of the kitchen had forbidden 
it. But now that they were back, Glory! Hallelujah! 

“And had it really,” the three home-returning fair 
ones asked, “seemed so desolate and deadly perilous 
just for want of them? What! — had seemed so even 
to stalwart Tom? — and Scipio? — and Habakkuk? 
And were Hettie and Dilsie actually so in terror of the 
Yankees?” 

“Oh, if we’d known that we’d never have started!” 
exclaimed Constance, with tears, which she stoutly 
quenched, while from all around came sighs and 
moans of love and gratitude. 

275 


Kincaid’s Battery 

And were the three verily back to stay ? 

Ah! that was the question. While Charlie, well at- 
tended, went on up and in they paused on the wide 
stair and in mingled distress and drollery asked each 
other, “Are we back to stay, or not?” 

A new stir among the domestics turned their eyes 
down into the garden. Beyond the lingering vehicles 
a lieutenant from Camp Callender rode up the drive. 
Two or three private soldiers hung back at the gate. 

“It’s horses and mules again, Nan,” gravely re- 
marked Constance, and the three, facing toward him, 
with Miranda foremost, held soft debate. Whether 
the decision they reached was to submit or resist, the 
wide ears of the servants could not be sure, but by the 
time the soldier was dismounting the ladies had sum- 
moned the nerve to jest. 

“Be a man, Miranda!” murmured Constance. 

“But not the kind I was!” prompted Anna. 

“No,” said her sister, “for this one coming is al- 
ready scared to death.” 

“So’s Miranda,” breathed Anna as he came up the 
steps uncovering and plainly uncomfortable. A pang 
lanced through her as she caught herself senselessly 
recalling the flag presentation. And then 

fr-i; - - 

fj 

“—oh! oh!” 

“Mrs. Callender?” asked the stranger. 

“Yes, sir,” said that lady. 

“My business”— he glanced back in nervous protest 
276 


The Callender Horses Enlist 

as the drivers beneath gathered their reins — “will you 
kindly detain ?” 

“If you wish, sir,” she replied, visibly trembling. 
“Isaac ” 

From the rear of the group came the voice of Anna: 
“Miranda, dear, I wouldn’t stop them.” The men 
regathered the lines. She moved half a step down and 
stayed herself on her sister’s shoulder. Miranda 
wrinkled back at her in an ecstasy of relief: 

“Oh, Anna, do speak for all of us!” 

The teams started away. A distress came into the 
soldier’s face, but Anna met it with a sober smile: 
“Don’t be troubled, sir, you shall have them. Drive 
round into the basement, Ben, and unload.” The 
drivers went. “You shall have them, sir, on your 
simple word of honor as ” 

“Of course you will be reimbursed. I pledge ” 

“No, sir,” tearfully put in Constance, “we’ve given 
our men, we can’t sell our beasts.” 

“They are not ours to sell,” said Anna. 

“Why, Nan!” 

“They belong to Kincaid’s Battery,” said Anna, 
and Constance, Miranda, and the servants smiled a 
proud approval. Even the officer flushed with a fine 
ardor: 

“You have with you a member of that com- 
mand?” 

“We have.” 

“Then, on my honor as a Southern soldier, if he 
will stay by them and us as far as Camp Moore, to 
Kincaid’s Battery they shall go. But, ladies ” 

“Yes,” knowingly spoke Miranda. “Hettie, Scipio, 
277 


Kincaid’s Battery 

Dilsie, you-all can go ’long back to your work now.” 
She wrinkled confidentially to the officer. 

“Yes,” he replied, “we shall certainly engage the 

enemy’s ships to-morrow, and you ladies must ” 

“Must not desert our home, sir,” said Anna. 

“Nor our faithful servants,” added the other two. 
“Ah, ladies, but if we should have to make this 

house a field hospital, with all the dreadful ” 

“Oh, that settles it,” cried the three, “we stay!” 


LII 

HERE THEY COME! 

What a night! Yet the great city slept. Like its 
soldiers at their bivouac fires it lay and slumbered 
beside its burning harbor. Sleep was duty. 

Callender House kept no vigil. Lighted by the far 
devastation, its roof shone gray, its cornice white, its 
tree-tops green above the darkness of grove and garden. 
From its upper windows you might have seen the town- 
ward bends of the river gleam red, yellow, and bronze, 
or the luminous smoke of destruction (slantingly over 
its flood and farther shore) roll, thin out, and vanish 
in a moonless sky. But from those windows no one 
looked forth. After the long, strenuous, open-air day, 
sleep, even to Anna, had come swiftly. 

Waking late and springing to her elbow she pres- 
ently knew that every one else was up and about. Her 
maid came and she hastened to dress. Were the 
hostile ships in sight? Not yet. Was the city still 
undestroyed? Yes, though the cotton brought out 
278 


Here They Come! 

to the harbor-side was now fifteen thousand bales 
and with its blazing made a show as if all the town 
were afire. She was furiously hungry; was not break- 
fast ready? Yes, Constance and Miranda — “done 
had breakfuss and gone oveh to de cottage fo’ to fix it 
up fo’ de surgeon . . . No, ’m, not dis house; he done 
change’ his mine.” Carriage horses — mules? “Yass, 
’m, done gone. Mahs’ Chahlie gone wid ’m. He 
gone to be boss o’ de big gun what show’ f’om dese 
windehs.” Oh, but that was an awful risk, wounded 
as he was ! “Yass, ’m, but he make his promise to Miss 
Flo’a he won’t tech de gun hisseff.” What! Miss 
Flora — ? “Oh, she be’n, but she gone ag’in. Law’! 
she a brave un! It e’en a’most make me brave, dess 
to see de high sperits she in!” The narrator de- 
parted. 

How incredible was the hour. Looking out on the 
soft gray sky and river and down into the camp, that 
still kept such quiet show of routine, or passing down 
the broad hall stair, through the library and into the 
flowery breakfast room, how keenly real everything 
that met the eye, how unreal whatever was beyond 
sight. How vividly • actual this lovely home in the 
sweet ease and kind grace of its lines and adornments. 
How hard to move with reference to things unseen, 
when heart and mind and all power of realizing un- 
seen things were far away in the ravaged fields, mangled 
roads and haunted woods and ravines between Corinth 
and Shiloh. 

But out in the garden, so fair and odorous as one 
glided through it to the Mandeville cottage, things 
boldly in view made sight itself hard to believe. Was 
279 


Kincaid’s Battery 

that bespattered gray horseman no phantom, who 
came galloping up the river road and called to a ser- 
vant at the gate that the enemy’s fleet was in sight 
from English Turn? Was that truly New Orleans, 
back yonder, wrapped in smoke, like fallen Carthage 
or Jerusalem? Or here! this black-and-crimson thing 
drifting round the bend in mid-current and without a 
sign of life aboard or about it, was this not a toy or 
sham, but one more veritable ship in veritable flames? 
And beyond and following it, helpless as a drift-log, 
was that lifeless white-and-crimson thing a burning pas- 
senger steamer — and that behind it another ? Here in 
the cottage, plainly these were Constance and Miranda, 
and, on second view, verily here were a surgeon and 
his attendants. But were these startling preparations 
neither child’s play nor dream? 

Child’s play persistently seemed, at any rate, the 
small bit of yellow stuff produced as a hospital flag. 
Oh, surely! would not a much larger be far safer? 
It would. Well, at the house there was some yellow 
curtaining packed in one of the boxes, Isaac could tell 
which 

“I think I know right where it is!” said Anna, and 
hurried away to find and send it. The others, widow 
and wife, would stay where they were and Anna would 
take command at the big house, where the domestics 
would soon need to be emboldened, cheered, calmed, 
controlled. Time flies when opening boxes that have 
been stoutly nailed and hooped over the nails. When the 
goods proved not to be in the one where Anna "knew” 
they were she remembered better, of course, and in 
the second they were found. Just as the stuff had been 
280 


Here They Come ! 

drawn forth and was being hurried away by the hand 
of Dilsie, a sergeant and private from the camp, one 
with a field glass, the other with a signal flag, came 
asking leave to use them from the belvedere on the 
roof. Anna led them up to it. 

How suddenly authentic became everything, up here. 
Flat as a map lay river, city, and plain. Almost under 
them and amusingly clear in detail, they looked down 
.into Camp Callender and the Chalmette fortifications. 
iWhen they wigwagged, “Nothing in sight,” to what 
seemed a very real toy soldier with a very real toy 
flag, on a green toy mound in the midst of the work 
(the magazine), he wigwagged in reply, and across 
the river a mere speck of real humanity did the same 
from a barely definable parapet. 

With her maid beside her Anna lingered a bit. She 
loved to be as near any of the dear South’s defenders 
as modesty would allow, but these two had once been 
in Kincaid’s Battery, her Hilary’s own boys. As 
lookouts they were not yet skilled. In this familiar 
scene she knew things by the eye alone, which the 
sergeant, unused even to his glass, could hardly be 
sure of through it. 

Her maid looked up and around. “Gwine to rain 
ag’in,” she murmured, and the mistress assented with 
her gaze in the southeast. In this humid air and level 
country a waterside row of live-oaks hardly four miles 
off seemed at the world’s edge and hid all the river 
beyond it. 

“There’s where the tips of masts always show first,” 
she ventured to the sergeant. “We can’t expect any 
but the one kind now, can we?” 

281 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“’Fraid not, moving up-stream.” 

“Then yonder they come. See? two or three tiny, 
needle-like — h-m-m! — just over that farth’ ?” 

He lowered the glass and saw better without it. 

The maid burst out: “Oh, Lawd, I does! Oh, good 
Gawd A’mighty!” She sprang to descend, but with a 
show of wonder Anna spoke and she halted. 

“If you want to leave me,” continued the mistress, 
“you need only ask.” 

“Law’, Miss Nannie! Me leave you? I ” 

“If you do — now — to-day — for one minute, I’ll 
never take you back. I’ll have Hettie or Dilsie.” 

“Missie,” — tears shone — “d’ ain’t nothin’ in Gawd’s 
worl’ kin eveh make me a runaway niggeh f’om you! 
But ef you tell me now fo’ to go fetch ev’y dahky we 
owns up to you ” 

“Yes! on the upper front veranda! Go, do it!” 

“Yass, ’m! ’caze ef us kin keep ’em anywahs it’ll 
be in de bes’ place fo’ to see de mos’ sights!” She 
vanished and Anna turned to the soldiers. Their 
flagging had paused while they watched the far-away 
top-gallants grow in height and numbers. Down in the 
works the long-roll was sounding and from every 
direction men were answering it at a run. Across the 
river came bugle notes. Sighingly the sergeant low- 
ered his glass: 

“Lordy, it’s the whole kit and b’ilin’! Wag, John. 
When they swing up round this end of the trees I’ll 
count ’em. Here they come! One, . . . two, . . . 
why, what small — oh, see this big fellow! Look at 
the width of those yards! And look at all their hulls, 
painted the color of the river! And see that pink 
282 


Here They Come! 

flutter — look!” he said to Anna, “do you get it? high 

up among the black ropes? that pink ” 

“Yes,” said Anna solemnly, “I see it ” 

“That’s the old ” 

“Yes. Must we fire on that? and fire first?” 
“We’d better!” laughed the soldier, “if we fire 
at all. Those chaps have got their answer ready and 
there won’t be much to say after it.” The three hur- 
ried down, the men to camp, Anna to the upper front 
veranda. There, save two or three with Constance 
and Miranda, came all the servants, shepherded by 
Isaac and Ben with vigilant eyes and smothered vows to 
“kill de fuss he aw she niggeh dat try to skedaddle”; 
came and stood to gaze with her over and between 
the grove trees. Down in the fortification every man 
seemed to have sprung to his post. On its outer crest, 
with his adjutant, stood the gilded commander peer- 
ing through his glass. 

“Missie,” sighed Anna’s maid, “see Malls’ Chahlie 
dah ? stan’in’ on de woodworks o’ dat big gun ? ” 
“Yes,” said Anna carelessly, but mutely praying 
that some one would make him get down. Her brain 
teemed with speculations: Where, how occupied and 
in what state of things, what frame of mind, was Victor- 
ine, were Flora and Madame ? Here at Steve’s cottage 
with what details were ’Randa and Connie busy? 
But except when she smiled round on the slaves, her 
gaze, like theirs, abode on the river and the shore de- 
fenses, from whose high staffs floated brightly the 
Confederate flag. How many a time in this last fear- 
ful year had her own Hilary, her somewhere still liv- 
ing, laughing, loving Hilary, stood like yon commander, 
£83 


Kincaid’s Battery 

about to deal havoc from, and to draw it upon, Kin- 
caid’s Battery. Who would say that even now he 
might not be so standing, with her in every throb of 
his invincible heart? 

Something out in the view disturbed the servants. 

“Oh, Lawd ’a’ massy!” moaned a woman. 

“Trus’ Him, Aun’ Jinnie!” prompted Anna’s maid. 
“ Y’ always is trus’ Him!” 

“Whoeveh don’t trus’ Him, I’ll bus’ him!” con- 
fidentially growled Isaac to those around him. 

“We all of us must and will!” said Anna elatedly, 
though with shameful inward sinkings and with no 
sustaining word from any of the flock, while out under 
the far gray sky, emerging from a slight angle of the 
shore well down the water’s long reach the battle line 
began to issue, each ship in its turn debouching into 
full relief from main-truck to water-line. 


LIII 

SHIPS, SHELLS, AND LETTERS 

Strange! how little sense of calamity came with 
them — at first. So graceful they were. So fitted — 
like waterfowl — to every mood of air and tide; their 
wings all furled, their neat bodies breasting the angry 
flood by the quiet power of their own steam and silent 
submerged wheels. So like to the numberless crafts 
which in kinder days, under friendly tow, had come 
up this same green and tawny reach and passed on to 
the queenly city, laden with gifts, on the peaceful em- 
bassies of the world. 


284 


Ships, Shells, and Letters 

But, ah! how swiftly, threateningly they grew: the 
smaller, two-masted fore-and-afts, each seemingly 
unarmed but for one monster gun pivoted amidships, 
and the towering, wide-armed three-masters, the low 
and the tall consorting like dog and hunter. Now, as 
they came on, a nice eye could make out, down on their 
hulls, light patches of new repair where our sunken 
fleet had so lately shot and rammed them, and, hang- 
ing over the middle of each ship’s side in a broad, dark 
square to protect her vitals, a mass of anchor chains. 
Their boarding-netting, too, one saw, drawn high round 
all their sides, and now more guns — and more! — 
and more! the huger frowning over the bulwarks, 
the lesser in unbroken rows, scowling each from its 
own port-hole, while every masthead revealed itself a 
little fort bristling with arms and men. Yes, and 
there, high in the clouds of rigging, no longer a 
vague pink flutter now, but brightly red-white-and-blue 
and smilingly angry — what a strange home-coming 
for it! ah, what a strange home-coming after a scant 
year-and-a-half of banishment ! — the flag of the Union, 
rippling from every peak. 

“Ain’ dey neveh gwine shoot?” asked a negro 
lad. 

“Not till they’re out of line with us,” said Anna 
so confidently as to draw a skeptical grunt from his 
mother, and for better heart let a tune float silently 
in and out on her breath: 

“I loves to be a beau to de ladies. 

I loves to shake a toe wid de ladies ” 

She felt her maid’s touch. Charlie was aiming his 
285 


Kincaid’s Battery 

great gun, and on either side of her Isaac and Ben 
were repeating their injunctions. She spoke out: 

“If they all shoot true we’re safe enough now.” 

“An’ ef de ships don’t,” put in Isaac, “dey’ll mighty 
soon ” 

The prophecy was lost. All the shore guns blazed 
and crashed. The white smoke belched and spread. 
Broken window-panes jingled. Wails and moans from 
the slave women were silenced by imperious outcries 
from Isaac and Ben. There followed a mid-air scream 
and roar as of fifty railway trains passing each other 
on fifty bridges, and the next instant a storm of the 
enemy’s shells burst over and in the batteries. But the 
house stood fast and half a dozen misquotations of 
David and Paul were spouted from the braver ones of 
Anna’s flock. In a moment a veil of smoke hid ships 
and shore, yet fearfully true persisted the enemy’s 
aim. To home-guards, rightly hopeless of their case 
and never before in action, every hostile shot was like 
a volcano’s eruption, and their own fire rapidly fell off. 
But on the veranda, amid a weeping, prattling, squeal- 
ing and gesturing of women and children, Anna could 
not distinguish the bursting of the foe’s shells from the 
answering thunder of Confederate guns, and when in 
a bare ten minutes unarmed soldiers began to come 
out of the smoke and to hurry through the grove, while 
riders of harnessed horses and mules — harnessed to 
nothing — lashed up the levee road at full run, and 
Isaac and Ben proudly cried that one was Mahs’ Chahlie 
and that the animals were theirs of Callender House, she 
still asked over the balustrade how the fight had gone. 

For reply despairing hands pointed her back toward 
286 


Ships, Shells, and Letters 

the river, and there, as she and her groaning servants 
gazed, the great black masts and yards, with head- 
way resumed and every ensign floating, loomed silently 
forth and began to pass the veranda. Down in the 
intervening garden, brightly self-contained among the 
pale stragglers there, appeared the one-armed reporter, 
with a younger brother in the weather-worn gray and 
red of Kincaid’s Battery. They waved a pocket- 
soiled letter and asked how to get in and up to her; 
but before she could do more than toss them a key 
there came, not from the ships but from close overhead 
under a blackening sky, one last, hideous roar and ear- 
splitting howl. The beautiful treasure-laden home 
heaved, quivered, lurched and settled again, the women 
shrieked and crouched or fell prone with covered 
heads, and a huge shell, sent by some pain-crazed 
fugitive from a gun across the river, and which had 
entered at the roof, exploded in the basement with a 
harrowing peal and filled every corner of the dwelling 
with blinding smoke and stifling dust. 

Constance and Miranda met Anna groping and 
staggering out of the chaos. Unharmed, herself, and 
no one badly hurt ? Ah, hear the sudden wail of that 
battery boy as he finds his one-armed brother! Anna 
kneels with him over the writhing form while women 
fly for the surgeon, and men, at her cry, hasten to im- 
provise a litter. No idle song haunts her now, yet 
a clamoring whisper times itself with every pulsation 
of her bosom: “The letter? the letter ?” 

Pity kept it from her lips, even from her weeping 
eyes; yet somehow the fallen boy heard, but when he 
tried to answer she hushed him. “Oh, never mind 
287 


Kincaid’s Battery 

that,” she said, wiping away the sweat of his agony, 
“it isn’t important at all.” 

“Dropped it,” he gasped, and had dropped it where 
the shell had buried it forever. 

Each for the other’s sake the lads rejected the hos- 
pital, with its risk of capture. The younger had the 
stricken one hurried off toward the railway and a 
refugee mother in the hills, Constance tenderly pro- 
testing until the surgeon murmured the truth: 

“It’ll be all one to him by to-morrow.” 

As the rearmost ship was passing the house Anna, 
her comeliness restored, half rose from her bed, where 
Miranda stood trying to keep her. From all the far 
side of the house remotely sounded the smart tramp 
and shuffle of servants clearing away wreckage, and 
the din of their makeshift repairs. She was “all right 
again,” she said as she sat, but the abstraction of her 
eyes and the harkening droop of her head showed that 
inwardly she still saw and heard the death-struck boy. 

Suddenly she stood. “Dear, brave Connie!” she 
exclaimed, “we must go help her, ’Randa.” And as 
they went she added, pausing at the head of a stair, 
“Ah, dear! if we, poor sinners all, could in our dull 
minds only multiply the awful numbers of war’s 
victims by the woes that gather round any one of them, 
don’t you think, ’Randa ?” 

Yes, Miranda agreed, certainly if man — yes, and 
woman — had that gift wars would soon be no more. 

On a high roof above their apartment stood our 
Valcour ladies. About them babbling feminine groups 
looked down upon the harbor landings black with male 
288 


Ships, Shells, and Letters 

vagabonds and witlings smashing the precious food 
freight (so sacred yesterday), while women and girls 
scooped the spoils from mire and gutter into buckets, 
aprons or baskets, and ran home with it through Jack- 
son Square and scurried back again with grain-sacks 
and pillow-slips, and while the cotton burned on and 
the ships, so broadly dark aloft, so pale in their war- 
paint below and so alive with silent, motionless men, 
came through the smoking havoc. 

“No uze to hope, ,, cooed the grandmother to Flora, 
whose gaze clung to the tree-veiled top of Callender 
House. “It riffuse’ to burn. ’T is not a so inflam- 
mab’ like that rope and tar.” The rope and tar meant 
their own burnt ship. 

“Ah, well,” was the light reply, “all shall be for 
the besM Those who watch the game close and play 
it with courage ” 

“And cheat with prudenze ?” 

“Yes! to them God is good. How well you know 
that! And Anna, too, she’s learning it — or she shall 
— dear Anna! Same time me, I am well content.” 

“Oh, you are joyful! But not because God is good, 
neither juz’ biccause those Yankee’ they arrive. Ah, 
that muz’ bring some splandid news, that lett’r of Irbee, 
what you riscieve to-day and think I don’t know it. 
’T is maybe ab-out Kincaid’s Batt’rie, eh?” At 
Flora’s touch the speaker flinched back from the roof’s 
edge, the maiden aiding the recoil. 

“Don’t stand so near, like that,” she said. “It 
temp’ me to shove you over.” 

They looked once more to the fleet. Slowly it 
came on. Near its line’s center the flag-ship hovered 
289 


Kincaid’s Battery 

just opposite Canal Street. The rear was far down 
by the Mint. Up in the van the leading vessel was 
halting abreast St. Mary’s Market, a few hundred 
yards behind which, under black clouds and on an 
east wind, the lone-star flag of seceded Louisiana 
floated in helpless defiance from the city hall. All 
at once heaven’s own thunders pealed. From a warn- 
ing sprinkle the women near about fled down a roofed 
hatchway. One led Madame. But on such a scene 
Flora craved a better curtain-fall and she lingered alone. 

It came. As if all its millions of big drops raced 
for one prize the deluge fell on city, harbor, and fleet 
and on the woe-smitten land from horizon to horizon, 
while in the same moment the line of battle dropped 
anchor in mid-stream. With a swirling mist wetting 
her fair head she waved in dainty welcome Irby’s 
letter and then pressed it to her lips; not for his sake 
— hah! — but for his rueful word, that once more his 
loathed cousin, Anna’s Hilary! was riding at the head 
of Kincaid’s Battery. 


LIV 

SAME APRIL DAY TWICE 

Black was that Friday for the daughters of Dixie. 
Farragut demanded surrender, Lovell declined. The 
mayor, the council, the Committee of Public Safety 
declined. 

On Saturday the two sides parleyed while Lovell 
withdrew his forces. On Sunday the Foreign Legion 
preserved order of a sort highly displeasing to ‘‘a 
290 


Same April Day Twice 

plain sailor,” as Farragut, on the Hartford , called 
himself, and to all the plain sailors of his fleet — who 
by that time may have been hard to please. On 
Monday the “ plain sailor” bade the mayor, who had 
once been a plain stevedore, remove the city’s women 
and children within forty-eight hours. But on Tues- 
day, in wiser mood, he sent his own blue-jackets, cut- 
lasses, muskets and hand-dragged howitzers, lowered 
the red-and-yellow-striped flag of one star and on 
mint and custom-house ran up the stars and stripes. 
Constance and Miranda, from their distant roof, saw 
the emblem soar to the breeze, and persuaded Anna 
to an act which cost her as many hours as it need have 
taken minutes — the destruction of the diary. That 
was on the twenty-ninth of April. 

Let us not get dates confused. “On the twenty- 
ninth of April,” says Grant, “the troops were at 
Hard Times (Arkansas), and the fleet (another fleet), 
under Admiral Porter, made an attack upon Grand 
Gulf (Mississippi), while I reconnoitered.” But that 
twenty-ninth was a year later, when New Orleans 
for three hundred and sixty-five separate soul-torturing 
days had been sitting in the twilight of her captivity, 
often writhing and raving in it, starved to madness 
for news of Lee’s and Stonewall’s victories and of her 
boys, her ragged, gaunt, superb, bleeding, dying, on- 
pressing boys, and getting only such dubious crumbs 
of rumor as could be smuggled in, or such tainted bad 
news as her captors delighted to offer her through 
the bars of a confiscated press. No ? did the treat- 
ment she was getting merely — as Irby, with much 
truth, on that twenty-ninth remarked in a group 
291 


Kincaid’s Battery 

about a headquarters camp-fire near Grand Gulf — 
did it merely seem so bad to poor New Orleans? 

Oh, but! — as the dingy, lean-faced Hilary cried, 
springing from the ground where he lay and jerking 
his pipe from his teeth — was it not enough for a world’s 
pity that to her it seemed so? How it seemed to the 
Callenders in particular was a point no one dared raise 
where he was. To them had come conditions so pe- 
culiarly distressing and isolating that they were not 
sharers of the common lot around them, but of one 
strangely, incalculably worse. Rarely and only in 
guarded tones were they spoken of now in Kincaid’s 
Battery, lately arrived here, covered with the glory of 
their part in Bragg’s autumn and winter campaign 
through Tennessee and Kentucky, and with Perry- 
ville, Murfreesboro’ and Stone River added to the long 
list on their standard. Lately arrived, yes; but bring- 
ing with them as well as meeting here a word appar- 
ently so authentic and certainly so crushing, (as to those 
sweet Callenders), that no one ever let himself hint 
toward it in the hearing even of Charlie Valcour, much 
less of their battle-scarred, prison-wasted, march-worn, 
grief-torn, yet still bright-eyed, brave-stepping, brave- 
riding Major. Major of Kincaid’s Battalion he was 
now, whose whole twelve brass pieces had that morn- 
ing helped the big iron batteries fight Porter’s gun- 
boats. 

“Finding Grand Gulf too strong,” says Grant, “I 
moved the army below, running the batteries there as 
we had done at Vicksburg. Learning here that there 
was a good road from Bruinsburg up to Port Gibson” 

(both in Mississippi), “I determined to cross ” 

292 


Same April Day Twice 

How pleasantly familiar were those names in New 
Orleans. Alike commercially and socially they meant 
parterres, walks, bowers in her great back-garden. 
From the homes of the rich planters around the towns 
and landings so entitled, and from others all up and 
down the river from Natchez to Vicksburg and the 
Bends, hailed many a Carondelet Street nabob and 
came yearly those towering steamboat-loads — those 
floating cliffs — of cotton-bales that filled presses, ships 
and bank-boxes and bought her imports — plows, 
shoes, bagging, spices, silks and wines: came also 
their dashing sons and daughters, to share and heighten 
the splendors of her carnivals and lure away her beaux 
and belles to summer outings and their logical results. 
In all the region there was hardly a family with which 
some half-dozen of the battery were not acquainted, 
or even related. 

“ Home again, home again from a foreign shore,” 

sang the whole eighty-odd, every ladies’ man of them, 
around out-of-tune pianos with girls whose brothers 
were all away in Georgia and Virginia, some forever 
at rest, some about to fight Chancellorsville. Such 
a chorus was singing that night within earshot of the 
headquarters group when Ned Ferry, once of the bat- 
tery, but transferred to Harper’s cavalry, rode up and 
was led by Hilary to the commanding general to say 
that Grant had crossed the river. Piano and song 
hushed as the bugles rang, and by daybreak all camps 
had vanished and the gray columns were hurrying, 
horse, foot, and wheels, down every southerly road to 
crush the invader. 


293 


Kincaid’s Battery 

At the head of one rode General Brodnax. Hear- 
ing Hilary among his staff he sent for him and began 
to speak of Mandeville, long gone to Richmond on some 
official matter and daily expected back; and then he 
mentioned “this fellow Grant,” saying he had known 
him in Mexico. “And now,” he concluded, “he’s 
the toughest old he one they’ve got.” 

On the face of either kinsman there came a fine 
smile that really made them look alike. “We’ll try 
our jaw-teeth on him to-morrow,” laughed the nephew. 

“Hilary, you weren’t one of those singers last even- 
ing, were you?” 

“Why, no, uncle, for once you’ll be pleased ” 

“Not by a dam-site!” The smile was gone. “You 
know, my boy, that in such a time as this if a leader 
— and above all such a capering, high-kicking colt as 
you — begins to mope and droop like a cab-horse in the 
rain, his men will soon not be worth a — what? . . . 
Oh, blast the others, when you do so you’re moping, 
and whether your men can stand it or not, I can’t! — 
what? . . . Well, then, for God’s sake don’t! For 
there’s another point, Hilary: as long as you were 
every night a ‘ladies’ man’ and every day a laugher at 
death you could take those boys through hell-fire at 
any call; but if they once get the notion — which you 
came mighty near giving them yesterday — that you 
hold their lives cheap merely because you’re tired of 
your own, they’ll soon make you wish you’d never 
set eyes on a certain friend of ours, worse than you 
or they or I have ever wished it yet.” 

“I’ve never wished it yet, uncle. I can’t. I’ve 
never believed one breath of all we’ve heard. It’s 
294 


Same April Day Twice 

not true. It can’t be, simply because it can’t 
be.” 

“Then why do you behave as if it were?” 

“I won’t, uncle. Honor bright! You watch me.” 

And next day, in front of Port Gibson, through all the 
patter, smoke, and crash, through all the charging, cheer- 
ing and volleying, while the ever-thinning, shortening 
gray lines were being crowded back from rise to rise 
— back, back through field, grove, hedge, worm-fence 
and farmyard, clear back to Grindstone Ford, Bayou 
Pierre, and with the cavalry, Harper’s, cut off and 
driven up eastward through the town — the enraged old 
brigadier watched and saw. He saw far, saw close, 
with blasphemous exultation, how Hilary and his guns, 
called here, sent there, flashed, thundered, galloped, 
blazed, howled and held on with furious valor and 
bleeding tenacity yet always with a quick-sightedness 
which just avoided folly and ruin, and at length stood 
rock fast, honor bright, at North Fork and held it till, 
except the cavalry, the last gray column was over and 
the bridges safely burning. 

That night Ned Ferry — of the cavalry withdrawn to 
the eastward uplands to protect that great source of 
supplies and its New Orleans and Jackson Railroad — 
was made a lieutenant, and a certain brave Charlotte, 
whom later he loved and won, bringing New Orleans 
letters to camp, brought also such news of the foe that 
before dawn, led by her, Ferry’s Scouts rode their first 
ride. All day they rode, while the main armies lay 
with North Fork between them, the grays entrenching, 
the blues rebridging. When at sundown she and 
Ned Ferry parted, and at night he bivouacked his 
295 


Kincaid’s Battery 

men for a brief rest in a black solitude from which 
the camp-fires of both hosts were in full sight and the 
enemy’s bridge-building easily heard, he sought, un- 
companioned, Kincaid’s Battery and found Hilary 
Kincaid. War is what Sherman called it, who two 
or three days later, at Grand Gulf (evacuated), crossed 
into this very strife. Yet peace (so-called) and riches 
rarely bind men in such loving pairs as do cruel toil, 
deadly perils, common griefs, exile from woman and 
daily experience of one another’s sweetness, valor, 
and strength, and it was for such things that this pair, 
loving so many besides, particularly loved each other. 

With glad eyes Kincaid rose from a log. 

“Major,” began the handsome scout, dapper from 
kepi to spurs in contrast to the worn visage and dress 
of his senior, but Hilary was already speaking. 

“My gentle Ned!” he cried. “Lieutenant — Ferry!” 

Amid kind greetings from Captain Bartleson and 
others the eyes of the two — Hilary’s so mettlesome, 
Ferry’s so placid — exchanged meanings, and the pair 
went and sat alone on the trail of a gun; on Roaring 
Betsy’s knee, as it were. There Hilary heard of the 
strange fair guide and of news told by her which 
brought him to his feet with a cry of joy that drew 
the glad eyes of half the battery. 

“The little mother saint of your flag, boys!” he ex- 
plained to a knot of them later, “the little godmother 
of your guns!” The Callenders were out of New 
Orleans, banished as “registered enemies.” 


296 


In Darkest Dixie and Out 


LV 

IN DARKEST DIXIE AND OUT 

Unhappy Callender House! Whether “ oppressors” 
or “ oppressed” had earliest or oftenest in that first 
year of the captivity lifted against it the accusing 
finger it would be hard to tell. 

When the Ship Island transports bore their blue 
thousands up the river, and the streets roared a new 
drum-thunder, before the dark columns had settled 
down in the cotton-yards, public squares, Carrollton 
suburb and Jackson Barracks, Callender House — you 
may guess by whose indirection — had come to the notice 
of a once criminal lawyer, now the plumed and em- 
blazoned general-in-chief, to whom, said his victims 
(possibly biased), no offense or offender was too small 
for his hectoring or chastisement. 

The women in that house, that nest of sedition, he 
had been told, at second-hand, had in the very dawn 
of secession completely armed the famous “Kincaid’s 
Battery ” which had early made it hot for him about 
Yorktown. Later in that house they had raised a 
large war-fund — still somewhere hidden. The day 
the fleet came up they had sent their carriage-horses 
to Beauregard, helped signal the Chalmette fortifica- 
tions, locked ten slaves in the dwelling under shell 
fire and threatened death to any who should stir to 
escape. So for these twelve months, with only Isaac, 
Ben, and their wives as protectors and the splendid 
freedom to lock themselves in, they had suffered the 
duress of a guard camped in the grove, their every 
297 


Kincaid’s Battery 

townward step openly watched and their front door 
draped with the stars and stripes, under which no 
feminine acquaintance could be enticed except the 
dear, faithful Valcours. 

But where were old friends and battery sisters? 
All estranged. Could not the Callenders go to them 
and explain? Explain! A certain man of not one- 
fifth their public significance or “secesh” record, 
being lightly asked on the street if he had not yet 
“ taken the oath’ 7 and as lightly explaining that he 
“wasn’t going to,” had, fame said, for that alone, 
been sent to Ship Island — where Anna “already 
belonged,” as the commanding general told the three 
gentle refusers of the oath, while in black letters on 
the whited wall above his judgment seat in the custom- 
house they read, “No distinction made here between 
he and she adders.” 

But could not the Valcours, those strangely immune, 
yet unquestioned true-lovers of poor Dixie, whose marvel- 
ous tact won priceless favors for so many distressed 
Dixie-ites, have explained for the Callenders? Flora 
had explained! — to both sides, in opposite ways, 
eagerly, tenderly, over and over, with moist eyes, yet 
ever with a cunning lameness that kept convince- 
ment misled and without foothold. Had the Callen- 
ders dwelt up-town the truth might have won out; 
but where they were, as they were, they might as well 
have been in unspeakable Boston. And so by her 
own sweet excusings she kept alive against them be- 
liefs or phantoms of beliefs, which would not have 
lived a day in saner times. 

Calumny had taken two forms: the monstrous black 
298 


In Darkest Dixie and Out 

smoke of a vulgar version and the superior divinings 
of the socially elect; a fine, hidden flame fed from 
the smoke. According to the vulgate the three ladies, 
incensed at a perfectly lawful effort to use their horses 
for the Confederate evacuation and actually defying 
it with cocked revolver, had openly abjured Dixie, 
renounced all purpose to fly to it and, denying shelter 
to their own wounded, had with signal flags themselves 
guided the conquering fleet past the town’s inmost de- 
fenses until compelled to desist by a Confederate shell 
in their roof. Unable to face an odium so well earned 
they had clung to their hiding, glad of the blue camp 
in their grove, living fatly on the bazaar’s proceeds 
and having high times with such noted staff-officers 
as Major Greenleaf, their kindness to whom in the 
days of his modest lieutenancy and first flight and of 
his later parole and exchange was not so hard now to 
see through. 

Greenleaf had come back with General Banks when 
Banks had succeeded Butler. Oppressed with military 
cares, he had barely time to be, without scrutiny, a 
full believer in the Valcours’ loyalty to the Union. 
Had they not avowed it to him when to breathe it was 
peril, on that early day when Irby’s command became 
Kincaid’s Battery, and in his days of Parish Prison 
and bazaar? How well those words fitly spoken had 
turned out! “Like apples of gold,” sang Flora to 
the timorous grandmother, “in wrappers of green- 
backs.” 

All the more a believer was he because while other 
faithfuls were making their loyalty earn big money 
off the government this genteel pair, reminding him 
299 


Kincaid’s Battery 

that they might yet have to risk themselves inside the 
gray lines again to extricate Charlie, had kept their 
loyalty as gracefully hidden as of old except from a 
general or two. Preoccupied Greenleaf, amiable 
generals, not to see that a loyalist in New Orleans 
stood socially at absolute zero, whereas to stand at the 
social ebullition point was more to the Valcours than 
fifty Unions, a hundred Dixies and heaven beside. 
It was that fact, more than any other, save one, which 
lent intrepidity to Floral perpetual, ever quickening 
dance on the tight-rope of intrigue; a performance 
in which her bonny face had begun to betray her dis- 
covery that she could neither slow down nor dance 
backward. However, every face had come to betray 
some cruel strain; Constance’s, Anna’s, even Victorine’s 
almond eyes and Miranda’s baby wrinkles. Yes, the 
Valcours, too, had, nevertheless, their monetary gains, 
but these were quiet and exclusively from their eyer 
dear, however guilty, “rebel” friends, who could not 
help making presents to Madame when brave Flora, 
spuming all rewards but their love, got for them, by 
some spell they could not work, Federal indulgences; 
got them through those one or two generals, who — 
odd coincidence! — always knew the “rebel” city’s 
latest “rebel” news and often made stern use of it. 

Full believer likewise, and true sorrower, was Green- 
leaf, in Hilary’s death, having its seeming proof from 
Constance and Miranda a^ well as from Flora. For 
in all that twelvemonth the Callenders had got no glad 
tidings, even from Mandeville. Battle, march and de- 
vastation, march, battle and devastation had made letters 
as scarce as good dreams, in brightest Dixie. But dark- 
300 


In Darkest Dixie and Out 

est Dixie was New Orleans. There no three “damned 
secesh” might stop on a comer in broadest sunlight and 
pass the time of day. There the “rebel” printing- 
presses stood cold in dust and rust. There churches 
were shut and bayonet-guarded because their ministers 
would not read the prayers ordered by the “oppressor,” 
and there, for being on the street after nine at night, 
ladies of society, diners-out, had been taken to the lock- 
up and the police-court. In New Orleans all news but 
bad news was contraband to any “he or she adder,” but 
four-fold contraband to the Callenders, the fairest mem- 
ber of whose trio, every time a blue-and-gold cavalier 
forced her conversation, stung him to silence with some 
word as mild as a Cordelia’s. And yet, (you demur,) 
in the course of a whole year, by some kind luck, surely 
the blessed truth — Ah, the damsel on the tight-rope 
took care against that! It was part of her dance to 
drop from that perch as daintily as a bee-martin way- 
laying a hive, devour each home-coming word as he 
devours bees, and flit back and twitter and flutter as a 
part of all nature’s harmony, though in chills of dis- 
may at her peril and yet burning to go to Hilary, from 
whom this task alone forever held her away. 

So throughout that year Anna had been to Green- 
leaf the veiled widow of his lost friend, not often or 
long, and never blithely met; loved more ardently 
than ever, more reverently; his devotion holding itself 
in a fancied concealment transparent to all; he de- 
fending and befriending her, yet only as he could 
without her knowledge, and incurring a certain stigma 
from his associates and superiors, if not an actual 
distrust. A whole history of itself would be the daily* 


Kincaid’s Battery 

nightly, monthly war of passions between him, her, 
Flora, and those around them, but time flies. 

One day Greenleaf, returning from a week-long circuit 
of outposts, found awaiting him a letter bearing North- 
ern imprints of mailing and forwarding, from Hilary 
Kincaid, written long before in prison and telling an- 
other whole history, of a kind so common in war that we 
have already gone by it; a story of being left for dead 
in the long stupor of a brain hurt; of a hairbreadth es- 
cape from living burial; of weeks in hospital unidenti- 
fied, all sense of identity lost; and of a daring feat of sur- 
gery, with swift mental, not so swift bodily, recovery. 
Inside the letter w r as one to Anna. But Anna was gone. 
Two days earlier, without warning, the Callenders 
— as much to Flora’s affright as to their relief, and 
“as much for Fred’s good as for anything,” said his 
obdurate general when Flora in feigned pity pleaded 
for their stay — had been deported into the Confeder- 
acy. 

“Let me carry it to her,” cried Flora to Greenleaf, 
rapturously clasping the letter and smiling heroically. 
“We can overtague them, me and my gran’mama! 
And then, thanks be to God! my brother we can 
bring him back! Maybe also — ah! maybee! I can 
obtain yo’ generals some uzeful news!” 

After some delay the pair were allowed to go. At 
the nearest gray outpost, in a sudden shower of the 
first true news for a week — the Mississippi crossed, 
Grant victorious at Port Gibson and joined by Sher- 
man at Grand Gulf — Flora learned, to her further 
joy, that the Callenders, misled by report that Brod- 
nax’s brigade was at Mobile, had gone eastward, as 
302 


In Darkest Dixie and Out 

straight away from Brodnax and the battery as Gulf- 
shore roads could take them, across a hundred-mile 
stretch of townless pine-barrens with neither railway 
nor telegraph. 

Northward, therefore, with Madame on her arm, 
sprang Flora, staggeringly, by the decrepit Jackson 
Railroad, along the quiet eastern bound of a region 
out of which, at every halt, came gloomy mention of 
Tallahala River and the Big Black; of Big Sandy, 
Five Mile and Fourteen Mile creeks; of Logan, Sher- 
man and Grant; of Bowen, Gregg, Brodnax and 
Harper, and of daily battle rolling northward barely 
three hours’ canter away. So they reached Jackson, 
capital of the state and base of General Joe Johnston’s 
army. They found it in high ferment and full of strag- 
glers from a battle lost that day at Raymond scarcely 
twenty miles down the Port Gibson road, and on the 
day following chanced upon Mandeville returning at last 
from Richmond. With him they turned west, again 
by rail, and about sundown, at Big Black Bridge, ten 
miles east of Vicksburg, found themselves clasping 
hands in open air with General Brodnax, Irby and 
Kincaid, close before the torn brigade and the wasted, 
cheering battery. Angels dropped down they seemed, 
tenderly begging off from all talk of the Callenders, 
who, Flora distressfully said, had been “grozzly ex- 
aggerated,” while, nevertheless, she declared herself, 
with starting tears, utterly unable to explain why on 
earth they had gone to Mobile — “unlezz the bazaar.” 
No doubt, however, they would soon telegraph by 
way of Jackson. But next day, while she, as mistress 
of a field hospital, was winning adoration on every side, 

3°3 


Kincaid’s Battery 

Jackson, only thirty miles off but with every wire cut, 
fell, clad in the flames of its military factories, mills, 
foundries and supplies and of its eastern, Pearl River, 
bridge. 


LVI 

BETWEEN THE MILLSTONES 

Telegraph! They had been telegraphing for days, 
but their telegrams have not yet been delivered. 

On the evening when the camps of Johnston and 
Grant with burning Jackson between them put out 
half the stars a covered carriage, under the unsolicited 
escort of three or four gray-jacketed cavalrymen and 
driven by an infantry lad seeking his command after 
an illness at home, crossed Pearl River in a scow at 
Ratcliff’s ferry just above the day’s battle-field. 

“When things are this bad,” said the boy to the per- 
son seated beside him and to two others at their back, 
his allusion being to their self-appointed guard, “any 
man you find straggling to the front is the kind a lady 
can trust.” 

This equipage had come a three hours’ drive, from 
the pretty town of Brandon, nearest point to which a 
railway train from the East would venture, and a 
glimpse into the vehicle would have shown you, be- 
hind Constance and beside Miranda, Anna, pale, ill, 
yet meeting every inquiry with a smiling request to 
push on. They were attempting a circuit of both 
armies to rehch a third, Pemberton’s, on the Big Black 
and in and around Vicksburg. 

Thus incited they drove on in the starlight over the 
304 


Between the Millstones 

gentle hills of Madison county and did not accept repose 
until they had put Grant ten miles behind and crossed 
to the south side of the Vicksburg and Jackson Rail- 
road at Clinton village with only twenty miles more 
between them and Big Black Bridge. The springs 
of Anna’s illness were more in spirit than body. Else 
she need not have lain sleepless that night at Clinton’s 
many cross-roads, still confronting a dilemma she had 
encountered in Mobile. 

In Mobile the exiles had learned the true whereabouts 
of the brigade, and of a battery then called Bartleson’s as 
often as Kincaid’s by a public which had half forgot- 
ten the seemingly well-established fact of Hilary’s death. 
Therein was no new shock. The new shock had 
come when, as the three waited for telegrams, they 
stood before a vast ironclad still on the ways but offer- 
ing splendid protection from Farragut’s wooden ter- 
rors if only it could be completed, yet on which work 
had ceased for lack of funds though a greater part of 
the needed amount, already put up, lay idle solely be- 
cause it could .not be dragged up to a total that would 
justify its outlay. 

“How much does it fall short?” asked Anna with 
a heart at full stop, and the pounding shock came when 
the shortage proved less than the missing proceeds 
of the bazaar. For there heaved up the problem, 
whether to pass on in the blind hope of finding her 
heart’s own, or to turn instead and seek the two de- 
tectives and the salvation of a city. This was the 
dilemma which in the last few days had torn half the 
life out of her and, more gravely than she knew, was 
threatening the remnant. 


305 


Kincaid’s Battery 

Constance and Miranda yearned, yet did not dare, 
to urge the latter choice. They talked it over covertly 
on the back seat of the carriage, Anna sitting bravely 
in front with the young “ web-foot,” as their wheels 
next day plodded dustily westward out of Clinton. 
Hilary would never be found, of course; and if found 
how would he explain why he, coming through what- 
ever vicissitudes, he the ever ready, resourceful and 
daring, he the men’s and ladies’ man in one, whom to 
look upon drew into his service whoever looked, had 
for twelve months failed to get so much as one spoken 
or written word to Anna Callender; to their heart- 
broken Nan, the daily sight of whose sufferings had 
sharpened their wits and strung their hearts to blame 
whoever, on any theory, could be blamed. Undoubt- 
edly he might have some dazzling explanation ready, 
but that explanation they two must first get of him 
before she should know that her dead was risen. 

Our travellers were minus their outriders now. At 
dawn the squad, leaving tender apologies in the night’s 
stopping-place, had left the ladies also, not foreseeing 
that demoralized servants would keep them there with 
torturing delays long into the forenoon. When at 
length the three followed they found highways in 
ruin, hoof-deep in dust and no longer safe from blue 
scouts, while their infantry boy proved as innocent of 
road wisdom as they, and on lonely by-ways led them 
astray for hours. We may picture their bodily and 
mental distress to hear, at a plantation house whose 
hospitality they craved when the day was near its end, 
that they were still but nine miles from Clinton with 
eleven yet between them and Big Black Bridge. 

306 


Between the Millstones 

Yet they could have wept for thanks as readily as 
for chagrin or fatigue, so kindly were they taken in, 
so stirring was the next word of news. 

“Why, you po’ city child’en!” laughed two sweet 
unprotected women. “Let these girls bresh you off. 
You sho’ly got the hafe o’ Hinds County on you. . . . 
Pemberton’s men? Law, no; they wuz on Big Black 
but they right out here, now, on Champion’s Hill, in 
sight f’om our gin-house. . . . Brodnax’ bri’ — now, 
how funny ! We jess heard o’ them about a’ hour ago, 
f’om a bran’ new critter company name’ Ferry’s 
Scouts. Why, Ferry’s f’om yo’ city! Wish you could 
’a’ seen him — oh, all of ’em, they was that slick! But, 
oh, slick aw shabby, when our men ah fine they ah 
fine, now, ain’t they! There was a man ridin’ with him 
— dressed diff’ent — he wuz the batteredest-lookin’, 
gayest, grandest — he might ’a’ been a gen’al! when 
in fact he was only a majo’, an’ it was him we heard 
say that Brodnax was some’uz on the south side o’ 
the railroad and couldn’t come up befo’ night. . . . 
What, us? no, we on the nawth side. You didn’t 
notice when you recrossed the track back yondeh? 
Well, you must ’a’ been ti-ud !” 

Anna dropped a fervid word to Miranda that set 
their hostesses agape. “Now, good Lawd, child, 
ain’t you in hahdship and dangeh enough? Not one 
o’ you ain’t goin’ one step fu’ther this day. Do you 
want to git shot? Grant’s men are a-marchin’ into 
Bolton’s Depot right now. Why, honey, you might as 
well go huntin’ a needle in a haystack as to go lookin’ 
fo’ Brodnax’s brigade to-night. Gen’al Pemberton him- 
self — why, he’d jest send you to his rear, and that’s 

3°7 


Kincaid’s Battery 

Vicksburg, where they a-bein’ shelled by the boats day 
and night, and the women and child’en a-livin’ in caves. 
You don’t want to go there?” 

“We don’t know,” drolly replied Anna. 

“Well, you stay hyuh. That’s what that majo’ told 
us. Says ’e, ‘ Ladies, we got to fight a battle here to- 
morrow, but yo’-all’s quickest way out of it’ll be to stay 
right hyuh. There’ll be no place like home to-morrow, 
not even this place,’ says ’e, with a sort o’ twinkle that 
made us laugh without seein’ anything to laugh at!” 

LVII 

GATES OF HELL AND GLORY 

The next sun rose fair over the green, rolling, open 
land, rich in half-grown crops of cotton and corn be- 
tween fence-rows of persimmon and sassafras. Before 
it was high the eager Callenders were out on a main 
road. Their Mobile boy had left them and given the 
reins to an old man, a disabled and paroled soldier 
bound homeward into Vicksburg. Delays plagued 
them on every turn. At a cross-road they were com- 
pelled to wait for a large body of infantry, followed 
by its ordnance wagons, to sweep across their path with 
the long, swift stride of men who had marched for two 
years and which changed to a double-quick as they 
went over a hill-top. Or next they had to draw wildly 
aside into the zigzags of a worm-fence for a column 
of galloping cavalry and shroud their heads from its 
stifling dust while their driver hung to his mules’ 
heads by the bits. More than once they caught from 
3°8 


Gates of Hell and Glory 

some gentle rise a backward glimpse of long thin lines 
puffing and crackling at each other; oftener and more 
and more they heard the far resound of artillery, the 
shuffling, clattering flight of shell, and their final peal 
as they reported back to the guns that had sent them; 
and once, when the ladies asked if a certain human 
note, rarefied by distance, was not the hurrahing of 
boys on a school-ground, the old man said no, it was 
“the Yanks charging.” But never, moving or stand- 
ing from aides or couriers spurring to front or flank, 
or from hobbling wounded men or unhurt stragglers 
footing to the rear, could they gather a word as to 
Brodnax’s brigade or Kincaid’s Battery. 

“Kincaid’s Battery hell! You get those ladies out 
o’ this as fast as them mules can skedaddle.” 

By and by ambulances and then open wagons began 
to jolt and tilt past them full of ragged, grimy, bloody 
men wailing and groaning, no one heeding the entreaties 
of the three ladies to be taken in as nurses. Near a 
cross-road before them they saw on a fair farmhouse the 
yellow flag, and a vehicle or two at its door, yet no load 
of wounded turned that way. Out of it, instead, ex- 
cited men were hurrying, some lamely, feebly, afoot, 
others at better speed on rude litters, but all rearward 
across the plowed land. Two women stepped out into 
a light trap and vanished behind a lane hedge before 
Constance could call the attention of her companions. 

“Why, Nan, if we didn’t know she was in New Or- 
leans I’d stand the world down that that was Flora!” 

There was no time for debate. All at once, in plain 
sight, right at hand, along a mask of young willows 
in the near left angle of the two roads, from a double 

3°9 


Kincaid’s Battery 

line of gray infantry whose sudden apparition had 
startled Anna and Miranda, rang a long volley. From 
a fringe of woods on the far opposite border the foe’s 
artillery pealed, and while the Callenders’ mules went 
into agonies of fright the Federal shells began to stream 
and scream across the space and to burst before and over 
the gray line lying flat in the furrows and darting back 
fire and death. With their quaking equipage hugging 
the farther side of the way the veiled ladies leaned 
out to see, but drew in as a six-mule wagon coming from 
the front at wild speed jounced and tottered by them. 
It had nearly passed when with just a touch of hubs it 
tossed them clear off the road, smashing one of their 
wheels for good and all. Some one sprang and held 
their terrified mules and they alighted on a roadside 
bank counting themselves already captured. 

“Look out, everybody,” cried a voice, “here come 
our own guns, six of ’em, like hell to split!” and in a 
moment the way was cleared. 

A minute before this, down the cross-road, south- 
ward a quarter of a mile or so, barely out of sight be- 
hind fence-rows, the half of a battalion of artillery had 
halted in column, awaiting orders. With two or three 
lesser officers a general, galloping by it from behind, 
had drawn up on a slight rise at the southwest corner 
of the fire-swept field, taken one glance across it and 
said, “Hilary, can your ladies’ men waltz into action 
in the face of those guns?” 

“They can dance the figure, General.” 

“Take them in.” 

Bartleson, watching, had mounted drivers and can- 
noneers before Kincaid could spur near enough to call, 
310 


Gates of Hell and Glory 

“ Column, forward 1” and turn again toward the Gen- 
eral and the uproar beyond. The column had barely 
stretched out when, looking back on it as he quick- 
ened pace, Hilary’s cry was, “Battery, trot, march!” 
So the six guns had come by the general: first Hilary, 
sword out, pistols in belt; then his adjutant; then bugler 
and guidon, and then Bartleson and the boys; horses 
striding out — ah, there were the Callenders’ own span! 
— whips cracking, carriages thumping and rumbling, 
guns powder-blackened and brown, their wheels, 
trails, and limbers chipped and bitten, and their own 
bronze pock-pitted by the flying iron and lead of other 
fights, and the heroes in saddle and on chests — with 
faces as war-worn as the wood and metal and brute 
life under them— cheering as they passed. Six clouds 
of dust in one was all the limping straggler had seen 
when he called his glad warning, for a tall hedge lined 
half the cross-road up which the whirlwind came; 
but a hundred yards or so short of the main way the 
whole battery, still shunning the field because of 
spongy ground, swept into full view at a furious gallop. 
Yet only as a single mass was it observed, and despite all 
its thunder of wheels was seen only, not heard. Around 
the Callenders was a blindfold of dust and vehicles, 
of shouting and smoke, and out in the field the roar 
of musketry and howling and bursting of shell. Even 
Flora, in her ambulance close beyond both roads, 
watching for the return of a galloping messenger and 
seeing Hilary swing round into the highway, low bent 
over his charger at full run, knew him only as he van- 
ished down it hidden by the tempest of hoofs, wheels, 
and bronze that whirled after him. 

3 11 


Kincaid’s Battery 

At Anna’s side among the rearing, trembling teams 
a mounted officer, a surgeon, Flora’s messenger, was 
commanding and imploring her to follow Constance 
and Miranda into the wagon which had wrecked their 
conveyance. And so, alas! all but trampling her 
down, yet unseeing and unseen though with her in every 
leap of his heart, he who despite her own prayers was 
more to her than a country’s cause or a city’s deliver- 
ance flashed by, while in the dust and thunder of the 
human avalanche that followed she stood asking 
whose battery was this and with drowned voice cry- 
ing, as she stared spell-bound, “Oh, God! is it only 
Bartleson’s? Oh, God of mercy! where is Hilary 
Kincaid?” A storm of shell burst directly overhead. 
Men and beasts in the whirling battery, and men and 
beasts close about her wailed, groaned, fell. Anna 
was tossed into the wagon, the plunging guns, dragging 
their stricken horses, swept out across the field, the 
riot of teams, many with traces cut, whipped madly 
away, and still, thrown about furiously in the flying 
wagon, she gazed from her knees and mutely prayed, 
but saw no Hilary because while she looked for a rider 
his horse lay fallen. 

Never again came there to that band of New Orleans 
boys such an hour of glory as this at Champion’s 
Hill. For two years more, by the waning light of a 
doomed cause, they fought on, won fame and honor; 
but for blazing splendor — of daring, skill, fortitude, 
loss and achievement which this purblind world still 
sees plainest in fraternal slaughter — that was the might- 
iest hour, the mightiest ten minutes, ever spent, from 
’Sixty-one to ’Sixty-five, by Kincaid’s Battery. 

312 


Gates of Hell and Glory 

Right into the face of death’s hurricane sprang the 
ladies’ man, swept the ladies’ men. “Battery, trot, 
walk. Forward into battery! Action front!” It was 
at that word that Kincaid’s horse went down; but while 
the pieces trotted round and unlimbered and the Federal 
guns vomited their fire point-blank and blue skirmish- 
ers crackled and the gray line crackled back, and while 
lead and iron whined and whistled, and chips, sand 
and splinters flew, and a dozen boys dropped, the steady 
voice of Bartleson gave directions to each piece by 
number, for “solid shot,” or “case” or “double 
canister.” Only one great blast the foe’s artillery 
got in while their opponents loaded, and then, with 
roar and smoke as if the earth had burst, Kincaid’s 
Battery answered like the sweep of a scythe. Ah, 
what a harvest! Instantly the guns were wrapped in 
their own white cloud, but, as at Shiloh, they were 
pointed again, again and again by the ruts of their 
recoil, Kincaid and Bartleson each pointing one as its 
nine men dwindled to five and to four, and in ten min- 
utes nothing more was to be done but let the gray line 
through with fixed bayonets while Charlie, using one 
of Hilary’s worn-out quips, stood on Roaring Betsy’s 
trunnion-plates and cursed out to the shattered foe, 
“Bricks, lime and sand always on hand! — , — , — !” 

Yet this was but a small part of the day’s fight, 
and Champion’s Hill was a lost battle. Next day the 
carnage was on Baker’s Creek and at Big Black Bridge, 
and on the next Vicksburg was invested. 


3i3 


Kincaid’s Battery 


LVIII 

ARACHNE 

Behold, “Vicksburg and the Bends.” 

In one of those damp June-hot caves galleried into 
the sheer yellow-clay sides of her deep-sunken streets, 
desolate streets where Porter’s great soaring, howling, 
burrowing “lamp-posts” blew up like steamboats 
and flew forty ways in search of women and children, 
dwelt the Callenders. Out among Pemberton’s trenches 
and redans, where the woods were dense on the crowns 
and faces of the landside bluffs, and the undergrowth 
was thick in the dark ravines, the minie-ball forever 
buzzed and pattered, and every now and then dabbed 
mortally into some head or breast. There ever closer 
and closer the blue boys dug and crept while they and 
the gray tossed back and forth the hellish hand-grenade, 
the heavenly hard-tack and tobacco, gay jokes and 
lighted bombs. There, mining and countermining, 
they blew one another to atoms, or under shrieking 
shells that tore limbs from the trees and made missiles 
of them hurled themselves to the assault and were 
hurled back. There, in a ruined villa whose shrubberies 
Kincaid named “Carrollton Gardens,” quartered old 
Brodnax, dining on the fare we promised him from the 
first, and there the nephew sang an ancient song from 
which, to please his listeners, he had dropped “old 
Ireland” and made it run: 

“O, my heart’s in New Orleans wherever I go ” 

meaning, for himself, that wherever roamed a certain 
3i4 


Arachne 

maiden whose whereabouts in Dixie he could only con- 
jecture, there was the New Orleans of his heart. 

One day in the last week of the siege a young mother 
in the Callenders’ cave darted out into the sunshine 
to rescue her straying babe and was killed by a lump 
of iron. Bombardments rarely pause for slips like 
that, yet the Callenders ventured to her burial in a grave- 
yard not far from “Carrollton Gardens.” As sympa- 
thy yet takes chances with contagions it took them then 
with shells. 

Flora Valcour daily took both risks — with contagions 
in a field hospital hard by the cemetery, and with shells 
and stray balls when she fled at moments from the 
stinking wards to find good air and to commune with 
her heart’s desires and designs. There was one hazard 
beside which foul air and stray shots were negligible, 
a siege within this siege. To be insured against the 
mere mathematical risk that those designs, thus far 
so fortunate, might by any least mishap, in the snap 
of a finger, come to naught she would have taken 
chances with the hugest shell Grant or Porter could 
send. For six weeks Anna and Hilary — Anna not 
knowing if he was alive, he thinking her fifty leagues 
away — had been right here, hardly an hour’s walk 
asunder. With what tempest of heart did the severed 
pair rise at each dawn, lie down each night; but Flora 
suffered no less. Let either of the two get but one 
glimpse, hear but one word, of the other, and — better 
a shell, slay whom it might. 

On her granddaughter’s brow Madame Valcour 
saw the murk of the storm. “The lightning must 
strike some time, you are thinking, eh?” she simpered. 

3 I S 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“No, not necessarily — thanks to your aid!” 

Thanks far more to Flora’s subtlety and diligence* 
It refreshed Madame to see how well the fair strategist 
kept her purposes hid. Not even Irby called them — 
those he discerned — hers. In any case, at any time, 
any possessive but my or mine, or my or mine on any 
lip but his, angered him. Wise Flora, whenever she 
alluded to their holding of the plighted ones apart, 
named the scheme his till that cloyed, and then “ours” 
in a way that made it more richly his, even when — 
clearly to Madame, dimly to him, exasperatingly to 
both — her wiles for its success — woven around his 
cousin — became purely feminine blandishments for 
purely feminine ends. In her own mind she accorded 
Irby only the same partnership of aims which she con- 
temptuously shared with the grandam, who, like Irby, 
still harped on assets, on that estate over in Louisiana 
which every one else, save his uncle, had all but for- 
gotten. The plantation and its slaves were still Irby’s 
objective, and though Flora was no less so, any chance 
that for jealousy of her and Hilary he might throw 
Anna into Hilary’s arms, was offset by his evident con- 
viction that the estate would in that moment be lost 
to him and that no estate meant no Flora. Madame 
kept that before him and he thanked and loathed her 
accordingly. 

Flora’s subtlety and diligence, yes, indeed. By 
skill in phrases and silences, by truth misshapen, by 
flatteries daintily fitted, artfully distributed, never over- 
done; by a certain slow, basal co-operation from Irby 
(his getting Mandeville sent out by Pemberton with 
secret despatches to Johnston, for example), by a deft 
316 


Arachne 

touch now and then from Madame, by this fine perti- 
nacity of luck, and by a sweet new charity of speech 
and her kindness of ministration on every side, the pret- 
ty schemer had everybody blundering into her hand, 
even to the extent of keeping the three Callenders con- 
vinced that Kincaid’s Battery had been cut off at Big 
Black Bridge and had gone, after all, to Mobile. No 
wonder she inwardly trembled. 

And there was yet another reason: since coming 
into Vicksburg, all unaware yet why Anna so inordi- 
nately prized the old dagger, she had told her where 
it still lay hid in Callender House. To a battery lad 
who had been there on the night of the weapon’s dis- 
appearance and who had died in her arms at Cham- 
pion’s Hill, she had imputed a confession that, having 
found the moving panel, a soldier boy’s pure wanton- 
ness had prompted him to the act which, in fact, only 
she had committed. So she had set Anna’s whole 
soul upon getting back to New Orleans to regain the 
trinket-treasure and somehow get out with it to Mobile, 
imperiled Mobile, where now, if on earth anywhere, 
her hope was to find Hilary Kincaid. 

Does it not tax all patience, that no better intuition 
of heart, no frenzy of true love in either Hilary or 
Anna — suffering the frenzies they did — should have 
taught them to rend the poor web that held them separ- 
ate almost within the sound of each other’s cry? No, 
not when we consider other sounds, surrounding con- 
ditions: miles and miles of riflemen and gunners in 
so constant a whirlwind of destruction and anguish 
that men like Maxime Lafontaine and Sam Gibbs 
went into open hysterics at their guns, and even while 
3i7 


Kincaid’s Battery 

sleeping on their arms, under humming bullets and 
crashing shells and over mines ready to be sprung, 
sobbed and shivered like babes, aware in their slum- 
bers that they might “die before they waked.” In 
the town unearthly howlings and volcanic thunders, 
close overhead, cried havoc in every street, at every 
cave door. There Anna, in low daily fevers, with her 
“heart in New Orleans,” had to be “kept quiet” 
by Miranda and Constance, the latter as widowed 
as Anna, wondering whether “Steve was alive or 
not.” 

This is a history of hearts. Yet, time flying as it does, 
the wild fightings even in those hearts, the famishing, 
down -breaking sieges in them, must largely be left 
untold — Hilary’s, Anna’s, Flora’s, all. Kincaid was 
in greater temptation than he knew. Many a battery 
boy, sick, sound or wounded — Charlie for one — saw 
it more plainly than he. Anna, supposed to be far 
away and away by choice, was still under the whole 
command’s impeachment, while Flora, amid conditions 
that gave every week the passional value of a peace- 
time year, was here at hand, an ever-ministering angel 
to them and to their hero; yet they never included him 
and Flora in one thought together but to banish it, 
though with tender reverence. Behind a labored dis- 
guise of inattention they jealously watched lest the 
faintest blight or languor should mar, in him, the per- 
fect bloom of that invincible faith to, and faith in, 
the faithless Anna, which alone could satisfy their 
worship of him. Care for these watchers brought the 
two much together, and in every private moment they 
talked of the third one; Flora still fine in the role of 


Arachne 

Anna’s devotee and Hilary’s “ pilot,” rich in long- 
thought-out fabrications, but giving forth only what 
was wrung from her and parting with each word as if it 
cost her a pang. Starving and sickening, fighting and 
falling, the haggard boys watched; yet so faultless was 
the maiden’s art that when in a fury of affright at the 
risks of time she one day forced their commander to 
see her heart’s starvation for him the battery saw 
nothing, and even to him she yet appeared faultless in 
modesty and utterly, marvelously, splendidly ignorant 
of what she had done. 

“Guide right!” he mused alone. “At last, H. K., 
your nickname’s got a meaning worth living up to!” 

While he mused, Flora, enraged both for him and 
against him, and with the rage burning in her eye 
and on her brow, stood before her seated grandmother, 
mutely giving gaze for gaze until the elder knew. 

The old woman resumed her needle. “And all you 
have for it,” was the first word, “is his pity, eh?” 

“Wait!” murmured the girl. “I will win yet, if I 
have to lose ” 

“Yes?” skeptically simpered the grandam, “ — have 
to lose yourself to do it ?” 

The two gazed again until the maiden quietly nodded 
and her senior sprang half up: 

“No, no! ah, no-no-no! There’s a crime awaiting 
you, but not that! Oh, no, you are no such fool!” 

“No?” The girl came near, bent low and with 
dancing eyes said, “I’ll be fool enough to lead him on 
till his sense of honor ” 

“Sense of — oh, ho, ho!” 

“Sense of his honor and mine — will make him my 

3 I 9 


Kincaid’s Battery 

prisoner. Or else — !” The speaker’s eyes burned. 
Her bosom rose and fell. 

“Yes,” said the seated one — to her needle — “or 
else his sense that Charlie — My God! don’t pinch my 
ear off!” 

“Happy thought,” laughed Flora, letting go, “but 
a very poor guess.” 


LIX 

IN A LABYRINTH 

For ladies’ funerals, we say, mortars and siege- 
guns, as a rule, do not pause. But here at Vicksburg 
there was an hour near the end of each day when the 
foe, for some mercy 1 to themselves, ceased to bombard, 
and in one of these respites that procession ventured 
forth in which rode the fevered Anna: a farm wagon, 
a battered family coach, a carryall or two. 

Yet in the midst of the graveyard rites there broke 
out on the unseen lines near by, northward, an uproar 
of attack, and one or two shells burst in plain view, 
frightening the teams. The company leaped into the 
vehicles any way they could and started townward 
over a miserable road with the contest resounding on 
their right. As they jostled along the edge of a wood 
that lay between them and the firing some mishap to the 
front team caused all to alight, whereupon a shell, 
faultily timed, came tearing through the tree-tops and 
exploded in the remains of a fence close beyond them. 
Amid thunder, smoke, and brute and human terror 
the remounting groups whirled away and had en- 
320 


In a Labyrinth 

tirely left the scene before that was asked which none 
could tell: Where was Anna? 

Anna herself did not know, could not inquire of 
her own mind. With a consciousness wholly disem- 
bodied she was mainly aware of a great pain that 
seemed to fill all the region and atmosphere, an at- 
mosphere charged with mysterious dim green light and 
full of great boomings amid a crackle of smaller ones; 
of shouts and cheers and of a placid quaking of myriad 
leaves; all of which things might be things or only 
divers manifestations of her undefinable self. 

By and by through the pain came a dream of some 
one like her living in a certain heaven of comfort and 
beauty, peace, joy, and love named “Callender House”; 
but the pain persisted and the dream passed into a 
horrible daytime darkness that brought a sense of 
vast changes near and far; a sense of many having 
gone from that house, and of many having most for- 
biddenly come to it; a sense of herself spending years 
and years, and passing from world to world, in quest of 
one Hilary, Hilary Kincaid, whom all others believed 
to be dead or false, or both, but who would and should 
and must be found, and when found would be alive 
and hale and true; a sense of having, with companions, 
been all at once frightfully close to a rending of the 
sky, and of having tripped as she fled, of having fallen 
and lain in a thunderous storm of invisible hail, and 
of having after a time risen again and staggered on, an 
incalculable distance, among countless growing things, 
fleeing down-hill, too weak to turn up-hill, till sud- 
denly the whole world seemed to strike hard against 
something that sent it reeling backward. 

321 


Kincaid’s Battery 

And now her senses began feebly to regather within 
truer limits and to tell her she was lying on the rooty 
ground of a thicket. Dimly she thought to be up and 
gone once more, but could get no farther than the 
thought although behind her closed lids glimmered 
a memory of deadly combat. Its din had passed, 
but there still sounded, just beyond this covert, fierce 
commands of new preparation, and hurried movements 
in response — a sending and bringing, dismissing, and 
summoning of men and things to rear or front, left or 
right, in a fury of supply and demand. 

Ah, what! water? in her face? Her eyes opened 
wildly. A man was kneeling beside her. He held a 
canteen; an armed officer in the foe’s blue. With 
lips parting to cry out she strove to rise and fly, but his 
silent beseechings showed him too badly hurt below 
the knees to offer aid or hindrance, and as she gained 
her feet she let him plead with stifled eagerness for 
her succor from risks of a captivity which, in starving 
Vicksburg and in such plight, would be death. 

He was a stranger and an enemy, whose hurried 
speech was stealthy and whose eyes went spying here 
and there, but so might it be just then somewhere 
with him for whom she yet clung to life. For that one’s 
sake, and more than half in dream, she gave the sufferer 
her support, and with a brow knit in anguish, but with 
the fire of battle still in his wasting blood, he rose, fit- 
fully explaining the conditions of the place and hour. 
To cover a withdrawal of artillery from an outer to 
an inner work a gray line had unexpectedly charged, 
and as it fell back with its guns, hotly pressed, a part 
of the fight had swung down into and half across this ra- 
322 


In a Labyrinth 

vine, for which another struggle was furiously preparing 
on both sides, but which, for him, in the interval, was 
an open way of deliverance if she would be his crutch. 

In equal bewilderment of thought and of outer 
sense, pleadingly assured that she would at once be 
sent back under flag of truce, with compassion deep- 
ening to compulsion and with a vague inkling that, 
failing the white flag, this might be heaven’s leading 
back to Callender House and the jewel treasure, to 
Mobile and to Hilary, she gave her aid. Beyond the 
thicket the way continued tangled, rough and dim. 
Twice and again the stricken man paused for breath 
and ease from torture, though the sounds of array, 
now on two sides, threatened at every step to become 
the cry of onset. Presently he stopped once more, 
heaved, swayed and, despite her clutch, sank heavily 
to the ground. 

“ Water!” he gasped, but before she could touch the 
canteen to his lips he had fainted. She sprinkled his 
face, but he did not stir. She gazed, striving for clear 
thought, and then sprang up and called. What word ? 
Ah, what in all speech should she call but a name, 
the name of him whose warrant of marriage lay at 
that moment in her bosom, the name of him who be- 
fore God and the world had sworn her his mated, life- 
long protection? 

“Hilary!” she wailed, and as the echoes of the green 
wood died, “Hilary!” again. On one side there was 
more light in the verdure than elsewhere and that way 
she called. That way she moved stumblingly and 
near the edge of a small clear space cried once more, 
“Hilary! . . . Hilary!” 


323 


Kincaid’s Battery 


LX 

Hilary’s ghost 

Faintly the bearer of that name heard the call; 
heard it rise from a quarter fearfully nearer the foe’s 
line than to his; caught it with his trained ear as, just 
beyond sight of Irby, Miranda, and others, he stood 
in amazed converse with Flora Valcour. Fortune, 
smiling on Flora yet, had brought first to her the terri- 
fied funeral group and so had enabled her to bear to 
Hilary the news of the strange estrayal, skilfully 
blended with that revelation of Anna’s Vicksburg 
sojourn which she, Flora, had kept from him so cleverly 
and so long. 

With mingled rapture and distress, with a heart 
standing as still as his feet, as still as his lifted head 
and shining eyes, he listened and heard again. Swiftly, 
though not with the speed he would have chosen, he 
sprang toward the call; sped softly through the brush, 
softly and without voice, lest he draw the enemy’s 
fire; softly and mutely, with futile backward wavings 
and frowning and imploring whispers to Flora as in 
a dishevelled glow that doubled her beauty she glided 
after him. 

Strangely, amid a swarm of keen perceptions that 
plagued him like a cloud of arrows as he ran, that 
beauty smote his conscience; her beauty and the wor- 
ship and protection it deserved from all manhood and 
most of all from him, whose unhappy, unwitting fortune 
it was to have ensnared her young heart and brought 
it to the desperation of an unnatural self-revealment; 

3 2 4 


Hilary’s Ghost 

her uncoveted beauty, uncourted love, unwelcome 
presence, and hideous peril! Was he not to all these in 
simplest honor peculiarly accountable? They lanced 
him through with arraignment as, still waving her be- 
seechingly, commandingly back, w T ith weapons un- 
drawn the more swiftly to part the way before him, 
his frenzy for Anna drew him on, as full of introspection 
as a drowning man, thinking a year’s thoughts at every 
step. Oh, mad joy in pitiful employment! Here 
while the millions of a continent waged heroic war 
for great wrongs and rights, here on the fighting-line 
of a beleaguered and starving city, here when at any 
instant the peal of his own guns might sound a fresh 
onset, behold him in a lover’s part, loving “not honor 
more,” setting the seal upon his painful alias, filching 
time out of the jaws of death to pursue one maiden 
while clung to by another. Oh, Anna ! Anna Callender ! 
my life for my country, but this moment for thy life 
and thee ! God stay the onslaught this one moment ! 

As he reached the edge of that narrow opening 
from whose farther side Anna had called he halted, 
glanced furtively about, and harkened forward, back- 
ward, through leafy distances grown ominously still. 
Oh, why did the call not come again? Hardly in a 
burning house could time be half so priceless. Not a 
breath could promise that in the next the lightnings, 
thunders, and long human yell of assault would not 
rend the air. Flora’s soft tread ceased at his side. 

“Stay back!” he fiercely breathed, and pointed 
just ahead: ‘“The enemy’s skirmishers!” 

“Come away!” she piteously whispered, trembling 
with terror. For, by a glimpse as brief as the catch 

3 2 5 


Kincaid’s Battery 

of her breath, yonder a mere rod or so within the farther 
foliage, down a vista hardly wider than a man’s shoul- 
ders, an armed man’s blue shoulders she had seen, 
under his black hat and peering countenance. Joy 
filled the depth of her heart in the belief that a thin 
line of such black hats had already put Anna behind 
them, yet she quaked in terror, terror of death, of 
instant, shot-torn death that might leave Hilary Kin- 
caid alive. 

With smiting pity he saw her affright. “Go back!” 
he once more gasped: “In God’s name, go back!” 
while recklessly he stepped forward out of cover. 
But in splendid desperation, with all her soul’s battle 
in her eyes — horror, love, defiance, and rending chagrin 
striving and smiting, she sprang after him into the 
open, and clutched and twined his arms. The blue 
skirmish-line, without hearing, saw him; saw, and 
withheld their fire, fiercely glad that tactics and mercy 
should for once agree. And Anna saw. 

“Come with me back!” whispered Flora, dragging 
on him with bending knees. “She’s lost! She’s gone 
back to those Yankee, and to Fred Greenleaf! And 
you” — the whisper rose to a murmur whose pathos 
grew with her Creole accent — “you, another step 
and you are a deserter! Yes! to your country — to 
Kincaid’ Batt’ree — to me-me-me!” The soft torrent 
of speech grew audible beyond them: “Oh, my God! 
Hilary Kincaid, listen-to-me-listen ! You ’ave no 
right; no ri-ight to leave me! Ah, you shall not I No 
right — ri-ight to leave yo’ Flora — sinze she’s tol’ you 
— sinze she’s tol’ you — w’at she’s tol’ you!” 

In this long history of a moment the blue skirmish- 
326 


Hilary’s Ghost 

ers had not yet found Anna, but it was their advance, 
their soft stir at her back as they came upon their 
fallen leader, that had hushed her cries. At the rift 
in the wood she had leaned on a huge oak and as body 
and mind again failed had sunk to its base in leafy 
hiding. Vaguely thence she presently perceived, lit 
from behind her by sunset beams, the farther edge of 
the green opening, and on that border, while she feebly 
looked, came suddenly a ghost! 

Ah, Heaven ! the ghost of Hilary Kincaid ! It looked 
about for her! It listened for her call! By the tree’s 
rough bark she drew up half her height, clung and, 
with reeling brain, gazed. How tall! how gaunt! how 
dingy gray! How unlike her whilom “ ladies’ man,” 
whom, doubtless truly, they now called dead and buried. 
But what — what — was troubling the poor ghost? 
What did it so wildly avoid? what wave away with 
such loving, tender pain? Flora Valcour! Oh, see, 
see ! Ah, death in life ! what does she see ? As by the 
glare of a bursting midnight shell all the empty gossip 
of two years justified — made real — in one flash of 
staring view. With a long moan the beholder cast 
her arms aloft and sank in a heap, not knowing that 
the act had caught Hilary’s eye, but willingly aware 
that her voice had perished in a roar of artillery from 
the farther brink of the ravine, in a crackle and fall of 
tree-tops, and in the “ rebel yell” and charge. 

Next morning, in a fog, the blue holders of a new 
line of rifle-pits close under the top of a bluff talked 
up to the grays in a trench on its crest. Gross was 
the banter, but at mention of “ladies” it purified. 

“ Johnnie !” cried “Yank,” “ who is she, the one we’ve 
327 


Kincaid’s Battery 

got?” and when told to ask her, said she was too ill to 
ask. By and by to “Johnnie’s” inquiries the blues 
replied : 

“He? the giant ? Hurt ? No-o, not half bad enough, 
when we count what he cost us. If we’d known he 
was only stunned we” — and so on, not very interest- 
ingly, while back in the rear of the gray line tearful 
Constance praised, to her face, the haggard Flora 
and, in his absence, the wounded Irby, Flora’s splendid 
rescuer in the evening onslaught. 

“A lifetime debt,” Miranda thought Flora owed 
him, and Flora’s meditative yes, as she lifted her eyes 
to her grandmother’s, was — peculiar. 

A few days later Anna, waking in the bliss of a re- 
stored mind, and feeling beneath her a tremor of paddle- 
wheels, gazed on the nurse at her side. 

“Am I a — prisoner?” she asked. 

The woman bent kindly without reply. 

“Anyhow,” said Anna, with a one-sided smile, 
“they can’t call me a spy.” Her words quickened: 
“I’m a rebel, but I’m no spy. I was lost. And he’s 
no spy. He was in uniform. Is he — on this boat?” 

Yes, she was told, he was, with a few others like 
him, taken too soon for the general parole of the sur- 
render. Parole? she pondered. Surrender? What 
surrender? “Where are we going?” she softly in- 
quired; “not to New Orleans?” 

The nurse nodded brightly. 

“But how can we get — by?” 

“By Vicksburg? We’re already by there.” 

“Has Vicks — ? . . . Has Vicksburg — fallen?” 

The confirming nod was tender. Anna turned 
328 


The Flag-of-Truce Boat 

away. Presently — “But not Mobile? Mobile has- 
n’t ? 

“No, not yet. But it must, don’t you think?” 
“Noi” cried Anna. “It must not! Oh, it must 

not! I— if I— Oh, if I ” 

The nurse soothed her smilingly: “My poor child,” 
she said, “you can’t save Mobile.” 


LXI 

THE FLAG-OF-TRUCE BOAT 

September was in its first week. The news of 
Vicksburg — and Port Hudson — ah, yes, and Gettys- 
burg! — was sixty days old. 

From Southern Mississippi and East Louisiana 
all the grays who marched under the slanting bayonet 
or beside the cannon’s wheel were gone. Left were 
only the “citizen” with his family and slaves, the post 
quartermaster and commissary, the conscript-officer, 
the trading Jew, the tax-in-kind collector, the hiding 
deserter, the jayhawker, a few wounded boys on fur- 
lough, and Harper’s cavalry. Throughout the Delta 
and widely about its grief-broken, discrowned, beggared, 
shame-crazed, brow-beaten Crescent City the giddying 
heat quaked visibly over the high corn, cotton, and cane, 
up and down the broken levees and ruined highways, 
empty byways, and grass-grown railways, on charred 
bridges, felled groves, and long burnt fence lines. The 
deep, moss-draped, vine-tangled swamps were dry. 

So quivered the same heat in the city’s empty thor- 
oughfares. Flowers rioted in the unkept gardens. The 
329 


Kincaid’s Battery 

cicada’s frying note fried hotter than ever. Dazzling 
thunder-heads towered in the upper blue and stood 
like snow mountains of a vaster world. The very 
snake coiled in the shade. The spiced air gathered 
no freshness from the furious, infrequent showers, the 
pavements burned the feet, and the blue “Yank” 
(whom there no one dared call so by word or look), 
so stoutly clad, so uncouthly misfitted, slept at noon 
face downward in the high grass under the trees of the 
public squares preempted by his tents, or with piece 
loaded and bayonet fixed slowly paced to and fro in 
the scant shade of some confiscated office-building, 
from whose upper windows gray captives looked down, 
one of them being “the ladies’ man.” 

Not known of his keepers by that name, though as 
the famous Major Kincaid of Kincaid’s Battery (the 
latter at Mobile with new guns), all July and August 
he had been of those who looked down from such 
windows; looked down often and long, yet never 
descried one rippling fold of one gossamer flounce of 
a single specimen of those far-compassionated “ladies 
of New Orleans,” one of whom, all that same time, 
was Anna Callender. No proved spy, she, no incar- 
cerated prisoner, yet the most gravely warned, though 
gentlest, suspect in all the recalcitrant city. 

Neither in those sixty days had Anna seen him. 
The blue sentries let no one pass in sight of that sort 
of windows. “Permit?” She had not sought it. 
Some one in gold lace called her “blamed lucky” to 
enjoy the ordinary permissions accorded Tom, Dick, 
and Harry. Indeed Tom, Dick, and Harry were freer 
than she. By reason of hints caught from her in 
330 


The Flag-of-Truce Boat 

wanderings of her mind on the boat, in dreams of a 
great service to be done for Dixie, the one spot where 
she most yearned to go and to be was forbidden her, 
and not yet had she been allowed to rest her hungry 
eyes on Callender House. Worse than idle, therefore, 
perilous for both of them and for any dream of great 
service, would it have been even to name the name 
of Hilary Kincaid. 

What torture the double ban, the two interlocked 
privations! Yonder a city, little sister of New Orleans, 
still mutely hoping to be saved, here Hilary alive again, 
though Anna still unwitting whether she should love 
and live or doubt and die. Yet what would they say 
when they should meet? How could either explain? 
Surely, we think, love would have found a way; but 
while beyond each other’s sight and hearing, no way 
could Hilary, at least, descry. 

To him it seemed impossible to speak to her — even 
to Fred Greenleaf had Fred been there! — without be- 
traying another maiden, one who had sealed his lips 
forever by confessing a heart which had as much — 
had more right to love than he to live. True, Anna, 
above all, had right to live, to love, to know; but in 
simplest honor to commonest manhood, in simplest 
manhood’s honor to all womankind, to Flora, to Anna 
herself, this knowledge should come from any other 
human tongue rather than from his. From Anna he 
needed no explanation. That most mysteriously she 
should twice have defaulted as keeper of sacred treasure; 
that she stood long accused, by those who would most 
gladly have scouted the charge, of leanings to another 
suitor, a suitor in the blue, and of sympathies, nay, 
33i 


Kincaid’s Battery 

services, treasonous to the ragged standards of the 
gray; that he had himself found her in the enemy’s 
liites, carried there by her own steps, and accepting 
captivity without a murmur, ah, what were such light- 
as-air trials of true love’s faith while she was still Anna 
Callender, that Anna from whom one breath saying, 
“lam true,” would outweigh all a world could show 
or surmise in accusation? 

And Anna: What could she say after what she had 
seen? Could she tell him — with Flora, as it were, 
still in his arms — could she explain that she had been 
seeking him to cast herself there? Or if she stood 
mute until he should speak, what could he say to count 
one heart-throb against what she had seen? Oh, be- 
fore God! before God! it was not jealousy that could 
make her dumb or deaf to either of them. She con- 
fessed its pangs. Yes! yes! against both of them, 
when she remembered certain things or forgot this 
and that, it raged in her heart, tingled in the farthest 
reach of her starved and fever-dried veins. Yet to 
God himself, to whom alone she told it, to God him- 
self she protested on her knees it did not, should not, 
could not rule her. What right had she to give it 
room? Had she not discerned from the beginning 
that those two were each other’s by natural destiny? 
Was it not well, was it not God-sent to all three, that 
in due time, before too late, he and she — that other, 
resplendent she — should be tried upon each other alone 
• — together? Always hitherto she, Anna, had in some 
way, some degree, intervened, by some chance been 
thrust and held between them; but at length nature, 
destiny, had all but prevailed, when once more she — 
S3 2 


The Flag-of-Truce Boat 

stubbornly astray from that far mission of a city’s 
rescue so plainly hers — had crashed in between to the 
shame and woe of all, to the gain of no cause, no soul, 
no sweet influence in all love’s universe. Now, meet- 
ing Hilary, what might she do or say? 

One thing! Bid him, on exchange or escape — if 
Heaven should grant the latter — find again Flora, 
and in her companionship, at last unhindered, choose! 
Yes, that would be justice and wisdom, mercy and true 
love, all in one. But could she do it, say it? She 
sprang up in bed' to answer, “No-o-o! no, she was no 
bloodless fool, she was a woman! Oh, God of mercy 
and true love, no! For reasons invincible, no! but 
most of all for one reason, one doubt, vile jealousy’s 
cure and despair’s antidote, slow to take form but 
growing as her strength revived, clear at last and all- 
sufficing; a doubt infinitely easier, simpler, kinder, and 
more blessed than to doubt true love. Nay, no doubt, 
but a belief! the rational, life-restoring belief, that in 
that awful hour of twilight between the hosts, of twi- 
light and delirium, what she had seemed to see she 
had but seemed to see. Not all, ah, no, not all! 
Hilary alive again and grappling with death to come 
at her call had been real, proved real; the rest a spectre 
of her fevered brain! Meeting him now — and, oh, to 
meet him now! — there should be no questionings or 
explainings, but while he poured forth a love unsullied 
and unshaken she, scarce harkening, would with battle 
haste tell him, her fife’s commander, the one thing of 
value, outvaluing all mere lovers’ love: The fact that 
behind a chimney-panel of Callender House, in its old 
trivial disguise, lay yet that long-lost fund pledged to 

333 


Kincaid’s Battery 

Mobile’s defense — by themselves as lovers, by poor 
war-wasted Kincaid’s Battery, and by all its scattered 
sisters; the fund which must, as nearly on the instant as 
his and her daring could contrive, be recovered and 
borne thither for the unlocking of larger, fate-com- 
pelling resources of deliverance. 

One day Victorine came to Anna with ecstasy in 
her almond eyes and much news on her lips. “To 
bigin small,” she said, Flora and her grandmother had 
“arrive’ back ag-ain” at dawn that morning! Oddly, 
while Anna forced a smile, her visitor’s eyes narrowed 
and her lips tightened. So they sat, Anna’s smile 
fading out while her soul’s troubles inwardly burned 
afresh, Victorine’s look growing into clearer English 
than her Creole tongue could have spoken. “I trust 
her no more,” it said. “Long have I doubted her, 
and should have told you sooner but for — Charlie; 
but now, dead in love as you know me still to be, you 
have my conviction. That is all for the present. 
There is better news.” 

The ecstasy gleamed again and she gave her second 
item. These weeks she had been seeking, for herself 
and a guardian aunt, a passport into the Confederacy 
and lo! here it lay in her pretty hand. 

“Deztitution!” she joyfully confessed to be the 
plea on which it had been procured — by Doctor Sevier 
through Colonel — guess ! — “ Grinleaf ! — juz’ ritum’ ” 
from service in the field. 

And how were the destitute pair to go ? 

Ah! did Anna “rim-emb’r” a despatch-boat of un- 
rivalled speed whose engines Hilary Kin ? 

Yes, ah, yes! 


334 


The Flag-of-Truce Boat 

On which she and others had once ? 

Yes, yes! 

And which had been captured when the city fell? 
That boat was now lying off Callender House! Did 
Anna not know that her shattered home, so long merely 
the headquarters of a blue brigade, had lately become 
of large, though very quiet, importance as a rendezvous 
of big generals who by starlight paced its overgrown 
garden alleys debating and planning something of great 
moment ? Doctor Sevier had found that out and had 
charged Victorine to tell it with all secrecy to the big- 
gest general in Mobile the instant she should reach 
there. For she was to go by that despatch-boat. 

“ Aw-dinner-illy,” she said, a flag-of-truce craft 
might be any old tub and would go the short way, 
from behind the city and across the lakes, not all 
round by the river and the Chandeleur Islands. But 
this time — that very morning — a score or so of Con- 
federate prisoners (officers, for exchange) had been put 
aboard that boat, bound for Mobile. Plainly the whole 
affair was but a mask for reconnaissance, the boat, 
swiftest in all the Gulf, to report back at top speed 
by way of the lakes. But! — the aunt would not go 
at all! Never having been a mile from her door, she 
was begging off in a palsy of fright, and here was the 
niece with a deep plot — ample source of her ecstasy 
— a plot for Anna, duly disguised, to go in the aunt’s 
place, back to freedom, Dixie, and the arms of Con- 
stance and Miranda. 

Anna trembled. She could lovingly call the fond 
schemer, over and over, a brave, rash, generous little 
heroine and lay caresses on her twice and again, 

335 


Kincaid’s Battery 

but to know whether this was Heaven’s leading was 
beyond her. She paced the room. She clasped her 
brow. A full half of her own great purpose (great to 
her at least) seemed all at once as good as achieved, 
yet it was but the second half, as useless without the 
first as half a bridge on the far side of the flood. “I 
cannot go !” she moaned. For the first half was Hilary, 
and he — she saw it without asking — was on this cartel 
of exchange. 

Gently she came and took her rescuer’s hands: 
‘‘Dear child! If — if while there was yet time — I had 
only got a certain word to — him — you know? But, 
ah, me! I keep it idle yet; a secret, Victorine, a secret 
worth our three lives! oh, three times three hundred 
lives! Even now ” 

“Give it me, Anna! Give it! Give it me, that 
sick-rate! I’ll take it him!” 

Anna shook her head: “Ah, if you could — in time! 
Or even — even without him, letting him go, if just you 
and I — Come!” They walked to and fro in embrace: 
“Dear, our front drawing-room, so ruined, you know, 
by that shell, last year ” 

“Ah, the front? no! The behine, yes, with those 
two hole’ of the shell and with thad beegue hole in the 
floor where it cadge fiah.” 

“Victorine, I could go — with you — in that boat, if 
only I could be for one minute in that old empty front 
room alone.” 

Victorine halted and sadly tossed a hand: “Ah! 
h-amptee, yes, both the front and the back — till yes- 
teh-day! This morning, the front, no! Juz’ sinze 
laz’ week they ’ave brick’ up bitwin them cloze by 

336 


The Flag-of-Truce Boat 

that burned hole, to make of the front an office, and 
now the front ’t is o’cupy!” 

“Oh, not as an office, I hope?” 

“Worse! The worse that can be! They ’ave 
stop’ five prisoner’ from the boat and put them yondeh. 
Since an hour Col-on-el Grinleaf he tol’ me that — 
and she’s ad the bottom, that Flora! Bicause — ” 
The speaker gazed. Anna was all joy. 

“Because what?” demanded Anna, “because 
Hil ?” 

“Yaas! bicause he’s one of them! Ringgleadeh! 
I dunno, me, what is that, but tha’z what he’s accuse’ 
— ringg-leadingg ! ” 

Still the oblivious Anna was glad. “It is Flora’s 
doing,” she gratefully cried. “She’s done it! done 
it for us and our cause!” 

“Ah-h! not if she know herseff!” 

Anna laughed the discussion down: “Come, dear, 
come! the whole thing opens to me clear and 
wide!” 

Not so clear or wide as she thought. True, the 
suffering Flora was doing this, in desperate haste; 
but not for Anna, if she knew herself. Yet when 
Anna, in equal haste, made a certain minute, lengthy 
writing and, assisted by that unshaken devotee, 
her maid, and by Victorine, baked five small cakes 
most laughably alike (with the writing in one) 
and laid them beside some plainer food in a pretty 
basket, the way still seemed wide enough for patriot- 
ism. 

Now if some one would but grant Victorine leave 
to bestow this basket! As she left Anna she gave her 

337 


Kincaid’s Battery 

pledge to seek this favor of any one else rather than of 
Greenleaf; which pledge she promptly broke, with a 
success that fully reassured her cheerful conscience. 

LXII 

FAREWELL, JANE! 

“Happiest man in New Orleans !” 

So called himself, to Colonel Greenleaf, the large, 
dingy-gray, lively-eyed Major Kincaid, at the sentinelled 
door of the room where he and his four wan fellows, 
snatched back from liberty on the eve of release, were 
prisoners in plain view of the vessel on which they were 
to have gone free. 

With kind dignity Greenleaf predicted their un- 
doubted return to the craft next morning. Strange 
was the difference between this scene and the one in 
which, eighteen months before, these two had last 
been together in this room. The sentry there knew 
the story and enjoyed it. In fact, most of the blue 
occupants of the despoiled place had a romantic feeling, 
however restrained, for each actor in that earlier epi- 
sode. Yet there was resentment, too, against Green- 
leaf’s clemencies. 

“Wants?” said the bedless captive to his old chum, 
“no, thank you, not a want!” implying, with his eyes, 
that the cloud overhanging Greenleaf for favors shown 
to — hmm! — certain others was already dark enough. 
“We’ve parlor furniture galore,” he laughed, pointing 
out a number of discolored and broken articles that 
had been beautiful. One was the screen behind 
which the crouching Flora had heard him tell the ruin 

338 


Farewell, Jane! 


of her Mobile home and had sworn revenge on this home 
and on its fairest inmate. 

During the evening the prisoners grew a bit noisy, 
in song; yet even when their ditties were helped out by 
a rhythmic clatter of boot-heels and chair-legs the too 
indulgent Greenleaf did not stop them. The voices 
were good and the lines amusing not merely to the 
guards here and there but to most of their epauleted 
superiors who, with lights out for coolness, sat in tilted 
chairs on a far comer of the front veranda to catch the 
river breeze. One lay was so antique as to be as good 
as new: 

“ Our duck swallowed a snail, 

And her eyes stood out with wonder. 

Our duck swallowed a snail, 

And her eyes stood out with wonder 
Till the horns grew out of her tail, tail, tail, 


Tail, 

Tail, 


Tail, 

Tail, 

Tail, 


Tail, 

All asunder. 


And tore it 


Farewell, Jane! 


Our old horse fell into the well 
Around behind the stable. 

Our old horse fell into the well 
Around behind the stable. 

He couldn’t fall all the way but he fell, 
Fell, 

Fell, 

Fell, 

Fell, 

Fell, 

Fell, 

As far as he was able. 
Farewell, Jane!” 

339 


Kincaid’s Battery 

It is here we may safest be brief. The literature 
of prison escapes is already full enough. Working in 
the soft mortar of so new a wall and worked by one 
with a foundryman’s knowledge of bricklaying, the 
murdered Italian’s stout old knife made effective speed 
as it kept neat time with the racket maintained for it. 
When the happiest man in New Orleans warily put 
head and shoulders through the low gap he had opened, 
withdrew them again and reported to his fellows, the 
droll excess of their good fortune moved the five to 
livelier song, and as one by one the other four heads 
went in to view the glad sight the five gave a yet more 
tragic stanza from the farewell to Jane. The source 
of their delight was not the great ragged hole just 
over the intruding heads, in the ceiling’s lath and plaster, 
nor was it a whole corner torn off the grand-piano by the 
somersaulting shell as it leaped from the rent above to 
the cleaner one it had left at the baseboard in the room’s 
farther end. It was that third hole, burned in the floor; 
for there it opened, shoulder wide, almost under their 
startled faces, free to the basement’s floor and actually 
with the rough ladder yet standing in it which had 
been used in putting out the fire. That such luck 
could last a night was too much to hope. 

Yet it lasted. The songs were hushed. The room 
whence they had come was without an audible stir. 
Sleep stole through all the house, through the small camp 
of the guard in the darkened grove, the farther tents of 
the brigade, the anchored ships, the wide city, the star- 
lit landscape. Out in that rear garden-path w T here 
Madame Valcour had once been taken to see the head- 
high wealth of roses two generals, who had been there 
340 


Farewell, Jane! 

through all the singing, still paced to and fro and talked, 
like old Brodnax at Carrollton in that brighter time, 
“not nearly as much alone as they seemed.” One 
by one five men in gray, each, for all his crouching 
and gliding, as true and gallant a gentleman as either 
of those commanders, stole from the house’s basement 
and slipped in and out among the roses. Along a 
back fence a guard walked up and down. Two by 
two, when his back was turned, went four of the glid- 
ing men, as still as bats, over the fence into a city of 
ten thousand welcome hiding-places. The fifth, their 
“ringg-leadeh,” for whom they must wait concealed 
until he should rejoin them, lingered in the roses; 
hovered so close to the path that he might have touched 
its occupants as they moved back and forth; almost — 

to quote his uncle 

“Sat in the roses and heard the birds sing” — 
heard blue birds, in soft notes not twittered, muttered 
as by owls, revealing things priceless for Mobile to 
know. 

Bragg’s gray army, he heard, was in far Chatta- 
nooga facing Rosecrans, and all the slim remnants of 
Johnston’s were hurrying to its reinforcement. Mobile 
was merely garrisoned. Little was there save artillery. 
Here in New Orleans lay thousands of veterans flushed 
with their up-river victories, whose best and quickest 
aid to Rosecrans would be so to move as to turn Bragg’s 
reinforcements back southward. A cavalry dash 
across the pine-barrens of East Louisiana to cut the 
railroad along the Mississippi-Alabama line, a quick 
joint movement of land and naval forces by way of 
the lakes, sound, and gulf, and Mobile would fall. 

34i 


Kincaid’s Battery 

These things and others, smaller yet more startling, 
the listener learned of, not as pastime talk, but as a 
vivid scheme already laid, a mine ready to be sprung 
if its secret could be kept three days longer; and 
now he hurried after his four compatriots, his own 
brain teeming with a counterplot to convey this secret 
through the dried-up swamps to the nearest Confeder- 
ate telegraph station while Anna should bear it (and 
the recovered treasure) by boat to Mobile, two messen- 
gers being so many times surer than one. 

Early next morning Madame Valcour, entering an 
outer room from an inner one, found Flora writing a 
note. The girl kept on, conscious that her irksome 
critic was taking keen note of a subtle, cruel decay 
of her beauty, a spiritual corrosion that, without 
other fault to the eye, had at last reached the surface 
in a faint hardening of lines and staleness of bloom. 
Now she rose, went out, despatched her note and re- 
turned. Her manner, as the two sat down to bread 
and coffee, was bright though tense. 

“From Greenleaf?” inquired her senior, “and to 
the same?” 

The girl shook her fair head and named one of his 
fellow-officers at Callender House: “No, Colonel 
Greenleaf is much too busy* Hilary Kincaid has ” 

“ Esca-aped ? ” cried the aged one, flashed hotly, 
laughed, flashed again and smiled. “That Victorine 
kitten — with her cakes! And you — and Greenleaf — 
hah! you three catspaws — of one little — Anna!” 

Flora jauntily wagged a hand, then suddenly rose and 
pointed with a big bread knife: “Go, dress! We’ll 
save the kitten — if only for Charlie! Go! she must 
342 


The Iron-clad Oath 

leave town at once . Go! But, ah, grannie dear,” 
— she turned to a window — “for Anna, spite of all 
we can do, I am af-raid — Ship Island! Poor Anna I” 
At the name her beautiful arm, in one swift motion, 
soared, swung, drove the bright steel deep into the 
window-frame and left it quivering. 

“Really,” said a courteous staff-officer as he and 
Doctor Sevier alighted at the garden stair of Callender 
House and helped Anna and her maid from a public 
carriage, “only two or three of us will know you’re” — 
His smile was awkward. The pale doctor set his jaw. 
Anna musingly supplied the term: 

“A prisoner.” She looked fondly over the house’s 
hard-used front as they mounted the steps. “If they’d 
keep me here, Doctor,” she said at the top, “I’d 
be almost happy. But” — she faced the aide-de-camp 
— “they won’t, you know. By this time to-morrow I 
shall be” — she waved playfully — “far away.” 

“Mainland, or island?” grimly asked the Doctor. 

She did not know. “But I know, now, how a rab- 
bit feels with the hounds after her. Honestly,” she 
said again to the officer, “I wish I might have her 
cunning.” And the soldier murmured, “Amen.” 

LXIII 

THE IRON-CLAD OATH 

Under Anna’s passive air lay a vivid alertness to 
every fact in range of eye or ear. 

Any least thing now might tip the scale for life or 
death, and while at the head of the veranda steps she 

343 


Kincaid’s Battery 

spoke of happiness her distressed thought was of 
Hilary’s madcap audacity, how near at hand he might 
be even then, under what fearful risk of recognition 
and capture. She was keenly glad to hear two men 
complain that the guard about the house and grounds 
was to-day a new one awkward to the task. Of less 
weight now it seemed that out on the river the despatch- 
boat had shifted her berth down-stream and with 
steam up lay where the first few wheel turns would 
put her out of sight. Indoors, where there was much 
official activity, it relieved her to see that neither Hilary’s 
absence nor her coming counted large in the common 
regard. The brace of big generals were in the library 
across the hall, busy on some affair much larger than 
this of “ourn.” 

The word was the old coachman Israel’s. What a 
tender joy it was to find him in the wretched drawing- 
room trying to make it decent for her and dropping 
his tears as openly as the maid. With what a grace, 
yet how boldly, he shut the door between them and 
blue authority. While the girl arranged on a table, 
for Anna’s use, a basket of needlework brought with 
them he honestly confessed his Union loyalty, yet 
hurriedly, under his breath, bade Anna not despair, 
and avowed a devotion to the safety and comfort of 
“ole mahs’s and mis’s sweet baby” as then and for- 
ever his higher law. He was still autocrat of the base- 
ment, dropsied with the favor of colonels and generals, 
deferential to “folks,” but a past-master in taking 
liberties with things. As he talked he so corrected 
the maid’s arrangement of the screen that the ugly 
hole in the wall was shut from the view of visitors, 

344 


The Iron-clad Oath 

though left in range of Anna’s work-table, and as 
Anna rose at a tap on the door, with the gentle cere- 
mony of the old home he let in Doctor Sevier and 
Colonel Greenleaf and shut himself out. 

“Anna,” began the Doctor, “There’s very little 
belief here that you’re involved in this thing.” 

“Why, then,” archly said Anna, “who is?” 

“Ah, that’s the riddle. But they say if you’ll just 
take the oath of allegiance ” 

Anna started so abruptly as to imperil her table. 
Her color came and her voice dropped to its lowest 
note as she said between long breaths: “No! — no!— 
no!” 

But the Doctor spoke on : 

“They believe that if you take it you’ll keep it, and 
they say that the moment you take it you may go free, 
here or anywhere — to Mobile if you wish.” 

Again Anna flinched: “Mobile!” she murmured, 
and then lifting her eyes to Greenleaf’s, repeated, 
“No! No, not for my life. Better Ship Island.” 

Greenleaf reddened. “Anna,” put in the Doctor, 
but she lifted a hand: 

“They’ve never offered it to you, Doctor? H-oh! 
They’d as soon think of asking one of our generals. 
They’d almost as soon” — the corners of her lips hinted 
a smile — “ask Hilary Kincaid.” 

“I’ve never advised any one against it, Anna.” 

“Well, I do! — every God-fearing Southern man 
and woman. A woman is all I am and I may be short- 
sighted, narrow, and foolish, but — Oh, Colonel Green- 
leaf, you shouldn’t have let Doctor Sevier take this 

burden for you. It’s hard enough ” 

345 


Kincaid’s Battery 

The Doctor intervened: “Anna, dear, this old 
friend of yours” — laying a finger on Greenleaf — “is 
in a tight place. Both you and Hilary ” 

“Yes, I know, and I know it’s not fair to him. 
Lieutenant — Colonel, I mean, pardon me ! — you sha’n’t 
be under odium for my sake or his. As far as I stand 
accused I must stand alone. The one who must go 
free is that mere child Victorine, on her pass, to-day, this 
morning. When I hear the parting gun of that boat 
down yonder I want to know by it that Victorine is 
safely on her way to Mobile, as she would be had she 
not been my messenger yesterday.” 

“She carried nothing but a message?” 

“Nothing but a piece of writing — mine! Colonel, 
I tell you faithfully, whatever Major Kincaid broke 
prison with was -not brought here yesterday by any 
one and was never in Victorine’s hands.” 

“Nor in yours, either?” kindly asked Greenleaf. 

Anna caught her breath and went redder than ever. 
Doctor Sevier stirred to speak, but Anna’s maid gave 
her a soft thrust, pointed behind the screen, and cov- 
ered a bashful smile with her apron. Anna’s blush 
became one of mirth. Her eyes went now to the 
Doctor and again to the broken wall. 

“Israel!” she laughed, “why do you enter ?” 

“On’y fitten’ way, missie. House so full o’ comm’ 
and goin’, and me havin’ dis cullud man wid me.” 

Out on the basement ladder, at the ragged gap of 
Israel’s “on’y fittin’ way,” was visible, to prove his 
word, another man’s head, white-turbaned like his 
own, and two dark limy hands passing in a pail of 
mortar. Welcome distraction. True, Greenleaf ’s luck- 
346 


“Now, Mr. Brick-Mason,—” 

less question still stood unanswered, but just then an 
orderly summoned him to the busy generals and spoke 
aside to Doctor Sevier. 

“Miss Valcour,” explained the Doctor to Anna. 

“Oh, Doctor,” she pleaded, “I want to see her! 
Beg them, won’t you, to let her in?” 

LXIV 

“NOW, MR. BRICK-MASON, — ” 

Amid the much coming and going that troubled 
Israel — tramp of spurred boots, clank of sabres, seek- 
ing, meeting and parting of couriers and aides — 
Madame Valcour, outwardly placid, inwardly terrified, 
found opportunity to warn her granddaughter, softly, 
that unless she, the granddaughter, could get that look 
of done-for agony out of her eyes, the sooner and 
farther they fled this whole issue, this fearful entangle- 
ment, the better for them. 

But brave Flora, knowing the look was no longer 
in the eyes alone but had for days eaten into her visage 
as age had for decades into the grandam’s, made no 
vain effort to paint it out with smiles but accepted and 
wore it in show of a desperate solicitude for Anna. 
Yet this, too, was futile, and before Doctor Sevier had 
exchanged five words with her she saw that to him the 
make-up was palpable and would be so to Greenleaf. 
Poor Flora! She had wrestled her victims to the edge 
of a precipice, yet it was she who at this moment, this 
dazzling September morning, seemed doomed to go 
first over the brink. Had not both Hilary and Anna 

347 


Kincaid’s Battery 

met again this Greenleaf and through him found answer 
for all their burning questions? She could not doubt 
her web of deceptions had been tom to shreds, cast to 
the winds. Not one of the three could she now hope to 
confront successfully, much less any two of them to- 
gether. To name no earlier reason — having reached 
town just as Kincaid was being sent out of it, she 
had got him detained on a charge so frivolous that 
how to sustain it now before Greenleaf and his gen- 
erals she was tortured to contrive. 

Yet something must be done. The fugitive must be 
retaken and retained, the rival deported, and, oh, 
Hilary Kincaid! as she recalled her last moment with 
you on that firing-line behind Vicksburg, shame and 
rage outgrew despair, and her heart beat hot in a 
passion of chagrin and then hotter, heart and brain, 
in a frenzy of ownership, as if by spending herself 
she had bought you, soul and body, and if only for 
self-vindication would have you from all the universe. 

“The last wager and the last card,” she smilingly re- 
marked to her kinswoman, “they sometimes win out,” 
and as the smile passed added, “I wish I had that 
bread-knife.” 

To Doctor Sevier her*£ry was, “Oh, yes, yes! Dear 
Anna! Poor Anna! Yes, before I have to see any one 
else, even Colonel Greenleave! Ah, please, Doctor, 
beg him he’ll do me that prizelezz favor, and that for 
the good God’s sake he’ll keep uz, poor Anna and me, 
not long waiting!” 

Yet long were the Valcours kept. It was the com- 
mon fate those days. But Flora felt no title to the 
common fate, and while the bustle of the place went 

348 


“Now, Mr. Brick-Mason,—” 


on about them she hiddenly suffered and, mainly for 
the torment it would give her avaricious companion, 
told a new reason for the look in her eyes. Only a 
few nights before she had started wildly out of sleep 
to find that she had dreamed the cause of Anna’s ir- 
reconcilable distress for the loss of the old dagger. 
The dream was true on its face, a belated perception 
awakened by bitterness of soul, and Madame, as she 
sat dumbly marvelling at its tardiness, chafed the more 
against each minute’s present delay, seeing that now 
to know if Kincaid, or if Anna, held the treasure was 
her liveliest hankering. 

Meantime the captive Anna was less debarred than 
they. As Greenleaf and the Doctor, withdrawing, 
shut her door, and until their steps died away, she had 
stood by her table, her wide thought burning to know 
the whereabouts, doings, and plight of him, once more 
missing, with whom a scant year-and-a-half earlier — 
if any war-time can be called scant — she had stood 
on that very spot and sworn the vows of marriage: to 
know his hazards now, right now! with man; police, 
informer, patrol, picket, scout; and with nature; the 
deadly reptiles, insects, and maladies of thicketed swamp 
and sun-beaten, tide-swept marsh; and how far he 
had got on the splendid mission which her note, with 
its words of love and faith and of patriotic abnegation, 
had laid upon him. 

Now eagerly she took her first quick survey of the 
room she knew so well. Her preoccupied maid was 
childishly questioning the busy Israel as he and the 
man out on the basement ladder removed bricks from 
the edges of the ragged opening between them. 

349 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“Can’t build solid ef you don’t staht solid,” she 
heard the old coachman say. She glided to the chim- 
ney-breast, searching it swiftly with her eyes and now 
with her hands. Soilure and scars had kept the secret 
of the hidden niche all these months, and neither stain, 
scar, nor any sign left by Hilary or Flora betrayed it 
now. Surely this was the very panel Flora had named. 
Yet dumbly, rigidly it denied the truth, for Hilary, 
having reaped its spoil, had, to baffle his jailors, cun- 
ningly made it fast. And time was flying 1 Trem- 
blingly the searcher glanced again to the door, to the 
screen, to the veranda windows — though these Israel 
had rudely curtained — and then tried another square, 
keenly harkening the while to all sounds and especially 
to the old negro’s incessant speech : 

“Now, Mr. Brick-mason, ef you’ll climb in hyuh 
I’ll step out whah you is and fetch a bucket o’ warteh. 
Gal, move one side a step, will you?” 

While several feet stirred lightly Anna persisted 
in her trembling quest — not to find the treasure, dear 
Heaven, but only to find it gone. Would that little 
be denied ? So ardent was the mute question that she 
seemed to have spoken it aloud, and in alarm looked 
once more at the windows, the door, the screen — the 
screen ! A silence had settled there and as her eye fell 
on it the stooping mason came from behind it, glan- 
cing as furtively as she at windows and door and then 
exaltedly to her. She stiffened for outcry and flight, 
but in the same instant he straightened up and she 
knew him; knew him as right here she had known him 
once before in that same disguise, which the sad for- 
tunes of their cause had prevented his further use of 

35 ° 


“Now, Mr. Brick-Mason,—” 


till now. He started forward, but with beseeching 
signs and whispers, blind to everything between them 
but love and faith, she ran to him. He caught her to 
his heart and drew her behind the screen under the en- 
raptured eyes of her paralyzed maid. For one long 
breath of ecstasy the rest of the universe was nothing. 
But then 

“The treasure?” she gasped. “The dagger?” 

He showed the weapon in its precious scabbard 
and sought to lay it in her hands, but — “ Oh, why ! why ! ” 
she demanded, though with a gaze that ravished his, — 
“Why are you not on your way ?” 

“Am!” he softly laughed. “Here, leave me the 
dirk, but take the sheath. Everything’s there that we 
put there long ago, beloved, and also a cypher report of 
what I heard last night in the garden — never mind 
what ! — take it , you will save Mobile! Now both of 
you slip through this hole and down the ladder and 
quietly skedaddle — quick — come ! ’ ’ 

“But the guards?” 

“Just brass it out and walk by them. Victorine’s 
waiting out behind with all her aunt’s things at a house 
that old Israel will tell you of — listen!” From just 
outside the basement, near the cisterns, a single line 
of song rose drowsily and ceased: 

“Heap mo’ dan worteh-million juice ” 

“That’s he. It means come on. Go!” He gathered 
a brick and trowel and rang them together as if at 
work. The song answered: 

“Aw ’possum pie aw roasted goose ” 

The trowel rang on. Without command from her 
35i 


Kincaid’s Battery 

mistress the maid was crouching into the hole. In the 
noise Anna was trying to press an anxious query upon 
Hilary, but he dropped brick and tool and snatched 
her again into his embrace. 

“Aw soppin’s o’ de gravy pan ” 

called the song. The maid was through! 

“But you, Hilary, my life ? gasped Anna as he 
forced her to the opening. 

“The swamp for me!” he said, again sounding the 
trowel. “I take this” — the trowel — “and walk out 
through the hall. Go, my soul’s treasure, go!” 

Anna, with that art of the day which remains a 
wonder yet, gathered her crinoline about her feet and 
twisted through and out upon the ladder. Hilary 
seized a vanishing hand, kissed it madly, and would 
have loosed it, but it clung till his limy knuckles went 
out and down and her lips sealed on them the distant 
song’s fourth line as just then it came: 

“De ladies loves de ladies’ man I” 

As mistress and maid passed in sight of the dark 
singer he hurried to them, wearing the bucket of water 
on his turban as lightly as a hat. “Is you got to go 
so soon?” he asked, and walked beside them. Swiftly, 
under his voice, he directed them to Victorine and 
then spoke out again in hearing of two or three blue 
troopers. “You mus’ come ag’in, whensomeveh you 
like.” 

They drew near a guard: “Dese is ole folks o’ mine, 
Mr. Gyuard, ef you please, suh, dess a-lookin’ at de ole 
home, suh.” 


352 


“ Now, Mr. Brick-Mason—” 

“We were admitted by Colonel Greenleaf,” said 
Anna, with a soft brightness that meant more than the 
soldier guessed, and he let them out, feeling as sweet, 
himself, as he tried to look sour. 

“Well, good-by, Miss Nannie,” said the old man, 
“I mus’ recapitulate back to de house; dey needs me 
pow’ful all de time. Good luck to you! Gawd bless 
you! . . . Dass ow ba-aby, Mr. Gyuard — Oh, Lawd, 
Lawd, de days I’s held dat chile out on one o’ dese ole 
han’s!” He had Flora’s feeling for stage effects. 

Toiling or resting, the Southern slaves were singers. 
With the pail on his head and with every wearer of 
shoulder-straps busy giving or obeying some order, it 
was as normal as cock-crowing that he should raise 
yet another line of his song and that from the house the 
diligent bricklayer should reply. 

Sang the water-carrier: 

“I’s natch-i-ully gallant wid de ladies, ” 

and along with the trowel’s tinkle came softly back, 
“I uz bawn wid a talent fo’ de ladies.” 

For a signal the indoor singer need not have gone 
beyond that line, but the spirit that always grew merry 
as the peril grew, the spirit which had made Kincaid’s 
Battery the fearfulest its enemies ever faced, insisted : 

“You fine it on de map o’ de contrac’ plan, 

I’s boun’ to be a ladies’ man!” 


353 


Kincaid’s Battery 


LXV 

FLORA’S LAST THROW 

Normal as cock-crowing seemed the antiphony to 
the common ear, which scarcely noticed the rareness of 
the indoor voice. But Greenleaf’s was not the common 
ear, nor was Flora Valcour’s. 

To her that closing strain made the torture of inac- 
tion finally unbearable. Had Anna heard? Leaving 
Madame she moved to a hall door of the room where 
they sat. Was Anna’s blood surging like her own? It 
could not! Under what a tempest of conjectures she 
looked down and across the great hall to the closed and 
sentinelled door of that front drawing-room so rife 
with poignant recollections. There, she thought, was 
Anna. From within it, more faintly now, came those 
sounds of a mason at work which had seemed to ring 
with the song. But the song had ceased. About the 
hall highly gilded officers conferred alertly in pairs or 
threes, more or less in the way of younger ones who 
smartly crossed from room to room. Here came Green- 
leaf! Seeking her? No, he would have passed una- 
ware, but her lips ventured his name. 

Never had she seen such a look in his face as that 
with which he confronted her. Grief, consternation, 
discovery and wrath were all as one save that only the 
discovery and wrath meant her. She saw how for two 
days and nights he had been putting this and that and 
this and that and this and that together until he had 
guessed her out. Sternly in his eyes she perceived con- 
tumely withholding itself, yet even while she felt the 

354 


Flora’s Last Throw 

done-for cry heave through her bosom, and the floor 
fail like a sinking deck, she clung to her stage part, 
babbled impromptu lines. 

“ Doctor Sevier — ?” she began 

“He had to go.” 

Again she read the soldier’s eyes. God! he was 
comparing her changed countenance — a fool could see 
he was! — with Anna’s! both smitten with affliction, 
but the abiding peace of truth in one, the abiding war 
of falsehood in the other. So would Kincaid do if he 
were here! But the stage waited: “ Ah, Colonel, Anna! 
poor Anna!” Might not the compassion- wilted sup- 
plicant see the dear, dear prisoner ? She rallied all her 
war-worn fairness with all her feminine art, and to her 
amazement, with a gleam of purpose yet without the 
softening of a lineament, he said yes, waved permission 
across to the guard and left her. 

She passed the guard and knocked. Quietly in the 
room clinked the brick-mason’s work. He strongly 
hummed his tune. Now he spoke, as if to his helper, 
who seemed to be leaving him. Again she knocked, 
and bent her ear. The mason sang aloud: 

“ Some day dis worF come to an en’, 

I don’t know how, I don’t know when ” 

She turned the door-knob and murmured, “Anna!” 

The- bricklaying clinked, tapped and scraped on. 
The workman hummed again his last two lines. 

“Who is it?” asked a feigned voice which she knew 
so instantly to be Kincaid’s that every beat of her 
heart jarred her frame. 

“ ’Tis I, Anna, dear. ’Tis Flora.” She was mindful 

355 


Kincaid’s Battery 

of the sentry, but all his attention was in the busy 
hall. 

There came a touch on the inner door-knob. “ Go 
away!” murmured the manly voice, no longer dis- 
guised. “In God’s name! for your own sake as well 
as hers, go instantly!” 

“No,” melodiously replied Flora, in full voice for 
the sentry’s ear, but with resolute pressure on the door, 
“no, not at all. . . . No, I muz’ not, cannot.” 

“Then wait one moment till you hear me at work!” 

She waited. Presently the trowel sounded again and 
its wielder, in a lowered tone, sang with it: 

“Dat neveh trouble Dandy Dan 
Whilst de ladies loves de ladies’ man.” 

At the first note she entered with some idle 
speech, closed the door, darted her glance around, saw 
no one, heard only the work and the song and sprang 
to the chimney-breast. She tried the panel — it would 
not yield! Yet there, as if the mason’s powerful hands 
had within that minute reopened and reclosed it, were 
the wet marks of his fingers. A flash of her instinct for 
concealment bade her wipe them off and she had barely 
done so when he stepped from the screen, fresh from 
Israel’s water-bucket, drying his face on his hands, his 
hands on his face and un-turbaned locks, prison- worn 
from top to toe, but in Dixie’s full gray and luminous 
with the unsmiling joy of danger. 

“It’s not there,” he loudly whispered, showing the bare 
dagger. “ Here it is. She has the rest, scabbard and all.” 

Flora clasped her hands as in ecstasy: “And is free? 
surely free?” 


356 


Flora’s Last Throw 

“ Almost! Surely when that despatch-boat fires !” 
In a few rapid words Hilary told the scheme of Anna’s 
flight, at the same time setting the screen aside so as to 
show the hole in the wall nearly closed, humming his 
tune and ringing the trowel on the brickwork. 

Flora made new show of rapture. Nor was it all 
mere show. Anna escaping, the treasure would escape 
with her, and Flora be thrown into the dungeon of 
penury. Yet let them both go, both rival and treasure! 
Love’s ransom! All speed to them since they left her 
Hilary Kincaid and left him at her mercy. But the 
plight was complex and suddenly her exultation changed 
to affright. “My God! Hilary Kincaid,” she panted, 
“you ’ave save’ her to deztroy yo’seff! You are ” 

Proudly, gaily he shook his head: “ No! No! against 
her will I’ve sent her, to save — ” He hushed. He had 
begun to say a city, Flora’s city. Once more a captive, 
he would gladly send by Flora also, could she contrive 
to carry it, the priceless knowledge which Anna, after 
all, might fail to convey. But something — it may have 
been that same outdone and done-for look which 
Greenleaf had just noted — silenced him, and the 
maiden resumed where she had broken off : 

“My God, Hilary Kincaid, you are in denger to be 
hanged a spy! Thiz minute you ’ave hide yo’ dizguise 
in that panel!” 

“You would come in,” said Hilary, with a playful 
wave of the trowel, and turned to his work, singing: 

“When I hands in my checks— — ” 

Flora ran and clung tenderly to his arm, but with 
a distressed smile he clasped her wrists in one hand 

357 


Kincaid’s Battery 

and gently forced her back again while she asked in 
burning undertone, “And you ’ave run that h-awful 
risk for me ? for me ? But, why ? why ? why ? ” 

“ Oh!” he laughingly said, and at the wall once more 
waved the ringing trowel, “ instinct, I reckon; ordinary 
manhood — to womanhood. If you had recognized me 
in that rig ” 

“ And I would! In any rigue thiz heart would reco’- 
nize you!” 

“ Then you would have had to betray me or else go, 
yourself, to Ship Island?” 

“H-o-oh! I would have gone!” 

“That’s what I feared,” said Hilary, though while 
he spoke she fiercely felt that she certainly would have 
betrayed him; not for horror of Ship Island but be- 
cause now, after this , no Anna Callender nor all the 
world conspired should have him from her alive. 

He lifted his tool for silence, and fresh anger wrung 
her soul to see joy mount in his eyes as from somewhere 
below the old coachman sang: 

“When I hands in my checks, O, my ladies!” 

Yet she showed elation: “That means Anna and 
Victorine they have pazz’ to the boat?” 

With merry nods and airy wavings of affirmation he 
sang back, rang back: 

“Mighty little I espec’s, O, my ladies! 

But whaheveh ” 

Suddenly he darkened imperiously and motioned 
Flora away. “Now! now’s your time! go! now! this 
instant go!” he exclaimed, and sang on: 

“—I is sent ” 

358 


Flora’s Last Throw 

“ Ah!” she cried, “ they’ll h-ask me ab-out her!” 

“I don’t believe it!” cried he, and sang again: 

“ — dey mus’ un-deh-stan’ ” 

“Yes,” she insisted, “ — muz’ undehstan’, and they 
will surely h-ask me!” 

“Well, let them ask their heads off! Go! at once! 
before you’re further implicated!” 

“ And leave you to ?” 

“Oh, doggon me. The moment that boat’s gun 
sounds — if only you’re out o’ the way — I’ll make a try. 
Go! for Heaven’s sake, go!” 

Instead, with an agony of fondness, she glided to 
him. Distress held him as fast and mute as at the 
flag presentation. But when she would have knelt he 
caught her elbows and held her up by force. 

“No,” he moaned, “you sha’n’t do that.” 

She crimsoned and dropped her face between their 
contending arms while for pure anguish he impetuously 
added, “ Maybe in God’s eyes a woman has this right, 
I’m not big enough to know; but as I'm made it can’t 
be done. I’m a man, no more, no less!” 

Her eyes flashed into his: “You are Hilary Kincaid. 
I will stan’!” 

“No,” — he loosed his hold, — “I’m only Hilary 
Kincaid and you’ll go — in mercy to both of us — in sim- 
ple good faith to every one we love — Oh, leave me!” 
He swung his head in torture: “I’d sooner be shot 
for a spy or a coward than be the imbecile this makes 
me.” Then all at once he was fierce: “ Go!” 

Almost below her breath she instantly replied, “I 
will not ! ” She stood at her full, beautiful height. “ To- 

359 


Kincaid’s Battery 

gether we go or together stay. List-en! — no-no, not 
for that.” (Meaning the gun.) In open anger she 
crimsoned again: “’Twill shoot, all right, and Anna, 
she'll go. Yes, she will leave you. She can do that. 
And you, you can sen’ her away!” 

He broke in with a laugh of superior knowledge and 
began to draw back, but she caught his jacket in both 
hands, still pouring forth, — “She has leave you — to 
me! me to you! My God! Hilary Kincaid, could she 
do that if she love’ you? She don’t! She knows not 
how — and neither you! But you, ah, you shall learn. 
She, she never can!” Through his jacket her knuckles 
felt the bare knife. Her heart leapt. 

“ Let go,” he growled, backing away and vainly dis- 
engaging now one of her hands and now the other. 
“ My trowel’s too silent.” 

But she clung and dragged, speaking on wildly: 
“You know, Hilary, you know? You love me. Oh, 
no-no-no, don’ look like that, I’m not crazee.” Her 
deft hands had got the knife, but she tossed it into the 
work-basket : “Ah, Hilary Kincaid, oft-en we love where 
we thing we do not, and oft-en thing we love where we 
do not ” 

He would not hear: “Oh, Flora Valcour! You 
smother me in my own loathing — oh, God send that 
gun!” The four hands still strove. 

“ Hilary, list-en me yet a moment. See me. Flora 
Valcour. Could Flora Valcour do like this — ag-ains y 
the whole nature of a woman — if she ?” 

“Stop! stop! you shall not ” 

“ If she di’n’ know, di’n’ feel, di’n’ see, thad you are 
loving her?” 


360 


Flora’s Last Throw 

“Yet God knows I’ve never given cause, except 
as ” 

“A ladies’ man?” prompted the girl and laughed. 

The blood surged to his brow. A wilder agony was 
on hers as he held her from him, rigid; “Enough!” he 
cried; “ We’re caged and doomed. Yet you still have 
this one moment to save us, all of us, from lifelong 
shame and sorrow.” 

She shook her head. 

“Yes, yes,” he cried. “You can. I cannot. I’m 
helpless now and forever. What man or woman, if I 
could ever be so vile as to tell it, could believe the truth 
of this from me ? In God’s name, then, go!” He ten- 
derly thrust her off: “ Go, live to honor, happiness and 
true love, and let me ” 

“Ezcape, perchanze, to Anna?” 

“Yes, if I — ” He ceased in fresh surprise. Not 
because she toyed with the dagger lying on Anna’s 
needlework, for she seemed not to know she did it; 
but because of a strange brightness of assent as she 
nodded twice and again. 

“ I will go,” she said. Behind the brightness was the 
done-for look, plainer than ever, and with it yet another, 
a look of keen purpose, which the grandam would 
have understood. He saw her take the dirk, so grasping 
it as to hide it behind wrist and sleeve; but he said 
only, beseechingly, — “Go!” 

“ Stay,” said another voice, and at the small opening 
still left in the wall, lo! the face of Greenleaf and the 
upper line of his blue and gilt shoulders. His gaze was 
on Flora. She could do nothing but gaze again. “I 
know, now,” he continued, “your whole two-years’ 
361 


Kincaid’s Battery 

business. Stay just as you are till I can come round 
and in. Every guard is doubled and has special 
orders.” But Hilary’s eye detained him. 

She dropped into a seat, staring like one demented, 
now at door and windows, now from one man to the 
other, now to the floor, while Kincaid sternly said, 
“ Colonel Greenleaf, the reverence due from any soldier 
to any lady — ” and Greenleaf interrupted 

“The lady may be sure of.” 

“And about this, Fred, you’ll be — dumb?” 

“Save only to one, Hilary.” 

“Where is she, Fred?” 

“On that boat, fancying herself disguised. Having 
you, we’re only too glad not to have her.” 

The retaken prisoner shone with elation: “And 
those fellows of last night? — got them back?” 

Greenleaf darkened, and shook his head. 

‘ ‘Hurrah,” quietly remarked the smiling Hilary. 

“Wait a moment,” said the blue commander, and 
vanished. 


LXVI 

“WHEN I HANDS IN MY CHECKS” 

Kincaid glanced joyfully to Flora, but her horrified 
gaze held him speechless. 

“Now,” she softly asked, “who is the helplezz — the 
cage’ — the doom’ ? You ’ave kill’ me.” 

“I’ll save you! There’s good fighting yet, if ” 

“H-oh! already, egcep’ inside me, I’m dead.” 

“Not by half! There’s time for a last shot and I’ve 
362 


“When I Hands in My Checks” 


seen it win!” He caught up the trowel, turned to his 
work and began to sing once more: 

“When I hands in my checks, O, my ladies, 

Mighty little I espec’s, O, my ladies ” 

He ceased and listened. Certainly, somewhere, 
some one had moaned. Sounds throughout the house 
were growing, as if final orders had set many in motion 
at once. For some cause unrelated to him or to Anna, 
to Flora or the silent boat, bugles and drums were 
assembling the encamped brigade. Suddenly, not 
knowing why, he flashed round. Flora was within half 
a step of him with her right arm upthrown. He seized 
it, but vain was the sparring skill that had won at the 
willow pond. Her brow was on his breast, the knife 
was in her left hand, she struck with thrice her natural 
power, an evil chance favored her, and, hot as lightning, 
deep, deep, the steel plunged in. He gulped a great 
breath, his eyes flamed, but no cry came from him or 
her. With his big right hand crushing her slim fingers 
as they clung to the hilt, he dragged the weapon forth 
and hurled her off. 

Before he could find speech she had regained her 
balance and amazed him yet again with a smile. The 
next instant she had lifted the dagger against herself, 
but he sprang and snatched it, exclaiming as he drew 
back: — 

“ No, you sha’n’t do that, either.” 

She strove after it. He held her off by an arm, but 
already his strength was failing. “My God!” he 
groaned, “it’s you, Flora Valcour, who’ve killed me. 
Oh, how did — how did you — was it acrid’ — wasn’t it 

363 


Kincaid’s Battery 

accident? Fly!” He flung her loose. “For your life, fly! 
Oh, that gun! Oh, God send it! Fly! Oh, Anna, Anna 
Callender! Oh, your city, Flora Valcour, your own 
city ! Fly, poor child ! I’ll keep up the sham for you ! ” 

Starting now here, now there, Flora wavered as he 
reeled to the broken wall and seized the trowel. The 
knife dropped to the floor but he set foot on it, bran- 
dished the tool and began to sing: 

“When I hands in my checks, O, my ladies ” 

A cry for help rang from Flora. She darted for the 
door but was met by Greenleaf. “Stay!” he repeated, 
and tone, hand, eye told her she was a prisoner. He 
halted aghast at the crimson on her hands and brow, 
on Hilary’s, on Hilary’s lips and on the floor, and him- 
self called, “Help here! a surgeon! help!” while Kin- 
caid faced him gaily, still singing: 

“Mighty little I espec’s, O, my ladies ” 

Stooping to re-exchange the tool for the weapon, the 
singer went limp, swayed, and as Greenleaf sprang to 
him, toppled over, lengthened out and relaxed on the 
arm of his foe and friend. Wild-eyed, Flora swept to 
her knees beside him, her face and form all horror and 
affright, crying in a voice fervid and genuine as only 
truth can make it in the common run of us, “He di’n’ 
mean! Oh, he di’n’ mean! ’Twas all accident! He 
di’n’ mean!” 

“Yes, Fred,” said Hilary. “She — she — mere acci- 
dent, old man. Keep it mum.” He turned a suffering 
brow to Flora: “You’ll explain for me — when” — he 
gathered his strength — “when the — boat’s gone.” 

364 


Mobile 

The room had filled with officers asking “ who, how; 
what?” “Did it himself, to cheat the gallows,” Ma- 
dame heard one answer another as by some fortune she 
was let in. She found Greenleaf chief in a group busy 
over the fallen man, who lay in Flora’s arms, deadly 
pale, yet with a strong man’s will in every lineament. 

“Listen, Fred,” he was gasping. “ It’ll sound. It’s 
got to! Oh, it will! One minute, Doctor, please. My 
love and a city — Fred, can’t some one look and see 
if ?” 

From a lifted window curtain the young aide who had 
brought Anna to the house said, “ Boat’s off.” 

“Thank God!” panted Hilary. “Oh, Fred, Fred, 
my girl and all l Just a minute, Doctor, — there /” 

A soft, heavy boom had rolled over the land. The 
pain-racked listener flamed for joy and half left the 
arms that held him: “Oh, Fred, wasn’t that heaven’s 
own music?” He tried to finish his song: 

“But whaheveh I is sent, dey mus’ undehstan’ — ” 
and swooned. 

LXVII 

MOBILE 

About a green spot crowning one of the low fortified 
hills on a northern edge of Mobile sat Bartleson, Mande- 
ville, Irby, Villeneuve and two or three lieutenants, on 
ammunition-boxes, fire-logs and the sod, giving their 
whole minds to the retention of Anna and Miranda Cal- 
lender, who sat on camp-stools. The absent Constance 
was down in the town, just then bestowing favors not 

365 


Kincaid’s Battery 

possible for any one else to offer so acceptably to a cer- 
tain duplicate and very self-centered Steve aged eighty 
days — sh-sh-sh! 

The camp group’s soft discourse was on the char- 
acter of one whom this earliest afternoon in August they 
had followed behind muffled drums to his final rest. 
Beginning at Carrollton Gardens, they said, then in the 
flowery precincts of Callender House, later in that 
death-swept garden on Vicksburg’s inland bluffs, and 
now in this one, of Flora’s, a garden yet, peaceful and 
fragrant, though no part of its burnt house save the 
chimneys had stood in air these three years and a half, 
the old hero 

“Yes,” chimed Miranda to whoever was saying it 

The old hero, despite the swarm of mortal perils and 
woes he and his brigade and its battery had come 
through in that period, had with a pleasing frequency — 
to use the worn-out line just this time more — 

“ Sat in the roses and heard the birds’ song.” 

The old soldier, they all agreed, had had a feeling for 
roses and song, which had gilded the edges and angles 
of his austere spirit and betrayed a tenderness too deep 
hid for casual discovery, yet so vital a part of him that 
but for its lacerations — with every new public disaster 
— he never need have sunk under these year-old 
Vicksburg wounds which had dragged him down at last. 

Miranda retold the splendid antic he had cut in St. 
Charles Street the day Virginia seceded. Steve re- 
counted how the aged warrior had regained strength 
from Chickamauga’s triumph and lost it again after 
Chattanooga. Two or three recalled how he had suf- 
366 


Mobile 

fered when Banks’ Red River Expedition desolated his 
fair estate and “forever lured away” his half-a-thousand 
“deluded people.” He must have succumbed then, 
they said, had not the whole “invasion” come to grief 
and been driven back into New Orleans. New Or- 
leans! younger sister of little Mobile, yet toward which 
Mobile now looked in a daily torture of apprehension. 
And then Hilary’s beloved Bartleson put in what Anna 
sat wishing some one would say. 

“With what a passion of disowned anxiety,” he re- 
marked, “had the General, to the last, watched every 
step, slip and turn in what Steve had once called ‘the 
multifurieuse carreer’ of Hilary Kincaid.” 

So turned the talk upon the long-time absentee, and 
instances were cited of those outbreaks of utter nonsense 
which were wont to come from him in awful moments : 
gibes with which no one reporting them to the uncle 
could ever make the “old man” smile. The youngest 
lieutenant (a gun-corporal that day the Battery left New 
Orleans) told how once amid a fearful havoc, when his 
piece was so short of men that Kincaid was himself 
down on the ground sighting and firing it, and an aide- 
de-camp galloped up asking hotly, “Who’s in command 
here!” the powder-blackened Hilary had risen his tallest 
and replied, — 

“I! . . . b, e, x, bex, Ibex!” 

A gentle speculation followed as to which of all 
Hilary’s utterances had taken finest effect on the boys, 
and it was agreed that most potent for good was the 
brief talk away back at Camp Callender, in which he 
had told them that, being artillery, they must know how 
to wait unmurmuring through months of “rotting idle- 

367 


Kincaid’s Battery 

ness” from one deadly “tea-party” to another. For a 
year, now, they had done that, and done it the better 
because he had all that same time been forced to do 
likewise in New Orleans, a prisoner in hospital, long at 
death’s door, and only now getting well. 

Anna remained silent. While there was praise of him 
what more could she want for sweet calm ? 

“True,” said somebody, “in these forty-odd months 
between March, ’Sixty-one, and August, ’Sixty-four, all 
hands had got their fill of war; laurels gained were 
softer to rest on than laurels unsprouted, and it ought 
to be as easy as rolling off a log for him to lie on his 
prison-hospital cot in “rotting idleness,” lulled in the 
proud assurance that he had saved Mobile, or at least 
postponed for a year ” 

“Hilary?” frowningly asked Adolphe. 

“Yes,” with a firm quietness said Anna. 

Villeneuve gallantly amended that somebody else 
owned an undivided half in the glory of that salvation 
and would own more as soon as the Union fleet (daily 
growing in numbers) should try to enter the bay: a hint 
at Anna, of course, and at the great ram Tennessee , 
which the Confederate admiral, Buchanan, had made 
his flag-ship, and whose completion, while nothing else 
was ready but three small wooden gunboats, was due — 
they had made even Anna believe — to the safe delivery 
of the Bazaar fund. 

So then she, forced to talk, presently found herself 
explaining how such full news of Hilary had so often 
come in these awful months; to wit, by the long, kind 
letters of a Federal nurse — and Federal officer’s wife — 
but for whose special devotion the captive must have 
368 


Mobile 

perished, and who, Anna revealed, was the schoolmis- 
tress banished North in ’Sixty-one. What she kept un- 
told was that, by favor of Greenleaf, Hilary had been 
enabled to auction off the poor remains of his home be- 
longings and thus to restore the returned exile her gold. 
The speaker let her eyes wander to an approaching 
orderly, and a lieutenant took the chance to mention that 
early drill near Carrollton, which the General had 
viewed from the Callenders’ equipage. Their two 
horses, surviving the shells and famine of Vicksburg, 
had been among the mere half-dozen of good beasts re- 
tained at the surrender by some ruse, and 

The orderly brought Bartleson a document and Man- 
deville a newspaper 

And it was touching, to-day, the lieutenant persisted, 
to see that once so beautiful span, handsome yet, lead- 
ing in the team of six that drew the draped caisson 
which — 

“Ah, yes!” assented all. 

Mandeville hurried to read out the news from Vir- 
ginia, which could still reach them through besieged 
Atlanta. It was of the Petersburg mine and its slaugh- 
ter, and thrilled every one. Yet Anna watched Bartle- 
son open his yellow official envelope. 

“Marching orders?” asked Miranda, and while his 
affirming smile startled every one, Steve, for some 
reason in the newspaper itself, put it up. 

“Are the enemy’s ships — ?” began Anna 

“We’re ordered down the bay,” replied Bartleson. 

“Then so are we,” she dryly responded, at which all 
laughed, though the two women had spent much time 
of late on a small boat which daily made the round 

369 


Kincaid’s Battery 

of the bay’s defenses. In a dingy borrowed rig they 
hastened away toward their lodgings. 

As they drove, Anna pressed Miranda’s hand and 
murmured, “Oh, for Hilary Kincaid!” 

“Ah, dear! not to be in this — ‘ tea-party’ ?” 

“Yes! Yes! His boys were in so many without him, 
from Shiloh to Port Gibson, and now, with all their first 
guns lost forever — theirs and ours — lost jor them, not 
by them — and after all this year of idleness, and the 
whole 'battery hanging to his name as it does — oh, 
’Randy, it would do more to cure his hurts than ten 
hospitals, there or here.” 

“But the new risks, Nan, as he takes them!” 

“He’ll take them wherever he is. I can’t rest a 
moment for fear he’s trying once more to escape.” 

(In fact, that is what, unknown to her, he had just 
been doing.) 

“But, ’Randa?” 

“Yes, dear?” 

“Whether he’s here or there, Kincaid’s Battery, his 
other self, will be in whatever goes on, and so, of 
course, will the Tennessee .” 

“Yes,” said Miranda, at their door. 

“Yes, and it’s not just all our bazaar money that’s 
in her, nor all our toil ” 

“Nor all your sufferings,” interrupted Miranda, as 
Constance wonderingly let them in. 

“Oh, nor yours! nor Connie’s! nor all — his; nor our 
whole past of the last two interminable years; but this 
whole poor terrified city’s fate, and, for all we know, the 
war’s final issue! And so I — Here, Con,” (handing a 
newspaper), “from Steve, husband.” 

37 ° 


By the Dawns’ Early Light 

(Behind the speaker Miranda, to Constance, made 
eager hand and lip motions not to open it there.) 

“ And so, ’Ran, I wish we could go ashore to-morrow, 
as far down the bay as we can make our usefulness an 
excuse, and stay ! — day and night ! — till — ! ” She waved 
both hands. 

Constance stared: “Why, Nan Callender!” 

“Now, Con, hush. You and Steve Second are non- 
combatants! Oh, ’Randa, let’s do it! For if those 
ships — some of them the same we knew so well and so 
terribly at home — if they come I — whatever happens — I 
want to see it!” 


LXVIII 

BY THE DAWN’S EARLY LIGHT 

Luck loves to go in mask. It turned out quite as 
well, after all, that for two days, by kind conspiracy of 
Constance and Miranda, the boat trip was delayed. In 
that time no fleet came. 

Here at the head of her lovely bay tremblingly waited 
Mobile, never before so empty of men, so full of women 
and children. Southward, from two to four leagues 
apart, ran the sun-beaten, breezy margins of snow-white 
sand-hills evergreen with weird starveling pines, dotted 
with pretty summer homes and light steamer-piers. 
Here on the Eastern Shore were the hotels: “How- 
ard’s,” “Short’s,” “Montrose,” “Battle’s Wharf” and 
Point Clear, where summer society had been wont to 
resort all the way from beloved New Orleans. Here, 
from Point Clear, the bay, broadening south-westward, 
doubled its width, and here, by and by, this eastern 

37 1 


Kincaid’s Battery 

shore-line suddenly became its southern by returning 
straight westward in a long slim stretch of dazzling 
green-and-white dunes, and shut its waters from the 
Gulf of Mexico except for a short “pass’’ of a few hun- 
dred yards width and for some three miles of shoal 
water between the pass and Dauphin Island; and there 
on that wild sea-wall’s end — Mobile Point — a dozen 
leagues due south from the town — sat Fort Morgan, 
keeping this gate, the port’s main ship-channel. Here, 
north-west from Morgan, beyond this main entrance and 
the league of impassable shoals, Fort Gaines guarded 
Pelican Channel, while a mile further townward Fort 
Powell held Grant’s Pass into and out of Mississippi 
Sound, and here along the west side, out from Mobile, 
down the magnolia-shaded Bay Shell Road and the 
bark road below it, Kincaid’s Battery and the last 
thousand “reserves” the town’s fighting blood could 
drip — whole platoons of them mere boys — had marched, 
these two days, to Forts Powell and Gaines. 

All this the Callenders took in with the mind’s eye 
as they bent over a candle-lighted map, while aware by 
telegraph that behind Gaines, westward on Dauphin 
Island, blue troops from New Orleans had landed and 
were then night-marching upon the fort in a black rain- 
storm. Furthest down yonder, under Morgan’s hun- 
dred and fifteen great guns, as Anna pointed out, in a 
hidden east-and-west double row athwart the main 
channel, leaving room only for blockade-runners, were 
the torpedoes, nearly seventy of them. And, lastly, 
just under Morgan’s north side, close on the channel’s 
eastern edge, rode, with her three small gunboats, the 
Tennessee , ugly to look at but worse to meet, waiting, 
372 


By the Dawn’s Early Light 

watching, as up here in Fort Powell, smiling at the 
scurviness of their assignment, watched and waited 
Kincaid’s Battery. 

Upstairs the new Steve gently wailed. 

“Let me!” cried Anna, and ran. 

Constance drew out Mandeville’s newspaper. Miran- 
da smiled despairingly. 

“I wish, now,” sighed the sister, “we’d shown it 
when we got it. I’ve had enough of keeping things 
from Nan Callender. Of course, even among our 
heroes in prison, there still may be a ‘Harry Renard’; 
but it’s far more likely that some one’s telegraphed or 
printed ‘Hilary Kincaid’ that way; for there was a 
Harry Renard, Steve says, a captain, in Harper’s 
cavalry, who months ago quietly died in one of our 
own hospitals — at Lauderdale. Now, at headquarters, 
Steve says, they’re all agreed that the name isn’t a mite 
more suggestive than the pure daring of the deed, and 
that if they had to guess who did it they’d every one 
guess Hilary Kincaid.” 

She spread the story out on her knee : Exchange of 
prisoners having virtually ceased, a number of captive 
Confederate officers had been started up the Mississippi 
from New Orleans, under a heavy but unwary guard, 
on a “tin-clad” steamer, to wear out the rest of the war 
in a Northern prison. Forbidden to gather even in 
pairs, they had yet moved freely about, often passing 
each other closely enough to exchange piecemeal 
counsels unnoticed, and all at once, at a tap of the boat’s 
bell, had sprung, man for man, upon their keepers and 
instantly were masters of them, of their arms stacked on 
the boiler-deck and of the steamboat, which they had 

373 


Kincaid’s Battery 

promptly run ashore on the East Louisiana side and 
burned. So ran the tale, and so broke off. Ought 
Anna to be told it, or not ? 

“No,” said the sister. “After all, why should we 
put her again through all those sufferings that so nearly 
killed her after Shiloh ? ” 

“If he would only ” 

“Telegraph? How do we know he hasn’t?” 

Next morning the two unencumbered Callenders went 
down the bay. But they found no need to leave the 
boat. A series of mishaps delayed her, the tide hindered, 
rain fell, and at length she was told to wait for orders and 
so lay all night at anchor just off Fort Gaines, but out 
of the prospective line of fire from the foe newly en- 
trenched behind it. The rain ceased and, as one of 
Hilary’s songs ran — 

“ The stars shed forth their light serene.” 

The ladies had the captain’s room, under the pilot- 
house. Once Anna woke, and from the small windows 
that opened to every quarter except up the bay townward 
looked forth across the still waters and low shores. 
Right at hand loomed Fort Gaines. A league away 
northwest rose small Fort Powell, just enough from the 
water to show dimly its unfinished parapets. In her 
heart’s vision she saw within it her own Kincaid’s Bat- 
tery, his and hers. South-eastward, an opposite league 
away, she could make out Fort Morgan, but not the 
Tennessee . The cool, briny air hung still, the wide 
waters barely lifted and fell. She returned and slept 
again until some one ran along the narrow deck under 
her reclosed windows, and a male voice said — 

374 


By the Dawn’s Early Light 

“The Yankee fleet! It’s coming in!” 

Miranda was dressing. Out on the small deck voices 
were quietly audible and the clink of a ratchet told that 
the boat was weighing anchor. She rang three-bells. 
The captain’s small clock showed half-past five. Now 
the swiftly dressed pair opened their windows. The 
rising sun made a golden path across the tranquil bay 
and lighted up the three forts and the starry battle- 
cross softly stirring over each. Dauphin Island and 
Mobile Point were moss-green and pearly white. The 
long, low, velvety pulsations of the bay were blue, lilac, 
pink, green, bronze. But angry smoke poured from 
the funnels of the Tennessee and her three dwarf con- 
sorts, they four also showing the battle-flag, and some 
seven miles away, out in the Gulf, just beyond the gleam- 
ing eastern point of Sand Island, was one other sign of 
unrest. 

“You see they’re under way?” asked Anna. 

Yes, Miranda saw, and sighed with the questioner. 
For there, once more — low crouched, war-painted and 
gliding like the red savages so many of them were named 
for, the tall ones stripped of all their upper spars, but 
with the pink spot of wrath flickering at every masthead 
— came the ships of Farragut. 

The two women could not count them, so straight on 
were they headed, but a man near the window said 
there were seven large and seven less, lashed small to 
large in pairs. Yet other counting they did, for now 
out of Sand Island Channel, just west of the ships, came 
a shorter line — one, two, three, four strange barely dis- 
cernible things, submerged like crocodiles, a hump on 
each of the first two, two humps on each of the others, 

375 


Kincaid’s Battery 

crossed the fleet’s course and led the van on the sunward 
side to bring themselves first and nearest to Morgan, its 
water-battery, and the Tennessee. 

Anna sighed while to Miranda the man overflowed 
with information. Ah, ah! in Hampton Roads the 
Virginia had barely coped with one of those horrors, of 
one hump, two guns; while here came four, whose 
humps were six and their giant rifles twelve. 

“Twenty-two guns in our whole flotilla,” the man 
was saying to Miranda, “and they’ve got nearly two 
hundred.” The anchor was up. Gently the boat’s 
engines held her against the flood-tide. The man had 
turned to add some word, when from the land side of 
Gaines a single columbiad roared and a huge shell 
screamed off into the investing entrenchments. Then 
some lighter guns, thirty-twos, twenty-fours, cracked 
and rang, and the foe replied. His shells burst over and 
in the fort, and a cloud of white and brown smoke rolled 
eastward, veiling both this scene and the remoter, sea- 
ward, silent, but far more momentous one of Fort 
Morgan, the fleet, and the Tennessee. 

The boat crept southward into the cloud, where only 
Gaines was dimly visible, flashing and howling land- 
ward. Irby was in that flashing. Steve was back 
yonder in Powell with Kincaid’s Battery. Through 
Steve, present at the reading of a will made at Vicksburg 
the day after Hilary’s capture there, Irby had just noti- 
fied Anna, for Hilary, that their uncle had left everything 
to him, Adolphe. She hoped it was true, but for once 
in her life had doubts without discomfort. How idly 
the mind can drift in fateful moments. The bell tapped 
for six. As it did so the two watchers descried through 
376 


Southern Cross and Northern Star 

a rift in the smoke the Tennessee signaling her grim litter, 
and the four crawling forward to meet the ships. Again 
the smoke closed in, but the small boat stole through 
it and hovered at its edge while the minutes passed and 
the foe came on. How plain to be seen was each pair, 
how familiar some of those taller shapes! 

“The Brooklyn , ’Randa, right in front. And there 
again is the admiral’s flag, on the Hart)ord. And there, 
with her topmasts down, is the Richmond — oh, ’Ran’, 
it’s the same bad dream once more!” 

Not quite. There were ships new to them, great and 
less, whose savage names, told by the man near the win- 
dow, chilled the blood with reminder of old wars and 
massacres: the Winnebago, Chickasaw, Odor or a, Ossi- 
pee, Metacomet, Seminole. “Look!” said the man, 
pointing, “the Tecumseh ” 


LXIX 

SOUTHERN CROSS AND NORTHERN STAR 

A red streak and white sun-lit puff sprang from the 
leading monitor’s turret, and the jarring boom of a vast 
gun came over the water, wholly unlike the ringing 
peals of Gaines’s lighter armament. Now its opposite 
cranny puffed and thundered. The man smiled an 
instant. “Spitting on her hands,” he said, but then 
murmured to himself, “Lord! look at that wind!” 

“Is it bad?” asked Anna. 

“It’ll blow every bit of smoke into our men’s eyes,” 
he sighed. 

The two white puffs melted into the perfect blue of 

377 


Kincaid’s Battery 

sea and sky unanswered. Fort Gaines and its besiegers 
even ceased to fire. Their fate was not in their own 
guns. More and more weird waxed the grisly dumb- 
ness of five-sided Morgan and the spectral silence of the 
oncoming league-long fleet. The light wind freshened. 
By the bell’s six taps it was seven o’clock. The boat 
drifting in on the tide made Fort Gaines seem to move 
seaward. Miranda looked back to Fort Powell and 
then out to sea again. 

“The worst,” said Anna, reading her thought, “will 
be down there with the Tennessee .” 

Miranda answered low: “Suppose, Nan, that, after 
all, he should ?” 

Anna turned sharply: “Get here? I expect it! Oh, 
you may gaze! I don’t forget how often I’ve flouted 
Con’s intuitions. But I’ve got one now, a big one!” 

“ That he’s coming ? ” 

“Been coming these two days — pure presentiment!” 

“Nan, whether he is or not, if you’ll tell us what 
Colonel Greenleaf wrote you I’ll tell you ” 

For a second Anna stared, Miranda wrinkling; but 
then, with her eyes on the fleet, she shook her head: 
“You’re mighty good, ’Randa, you and Con, never to 
have asked me in all these months; but neither he nor 
Hilary nor I will ever tell that. I wish none of us knew 
it. For one thing, we don’t, any of us, know clearly 
enough what really happened. Dear Fred Greenleaf! 
— if he does wear the blue, and is right now over there 
behind Fort Gaines!” 

She stood a moment pondering a fact not in the 
Union soldier’s letter at all; that only through his 
masterful, self-sacrificing intercession in military court 

37 8 


Southern Cross and Northern Star 

had Hilary escaped the death of a spy. But then her 
thought came back to Miranda’s request: “I can’t tell 
you, for I can’t tell Con. Flora’s her cousin, through 
Steve, and if she ever marries Captain Irby she’ll be 

Hilary’s cousin, and ” 

There, suddenly and once for all, the theme was 
dropped. Some man’s quick word broke in. Fort Mor- 
gan had veiled itself in the smoke of its own broadside. 
Now came its thunder and the answering flame and roar 
of the Brooklyn's bow-chaser. The battle had begun. 
The ship, still half a mile from its mark, was coming on 
as straight as her gun could blaze, her redskin ally at 
her side, and all the others, large and less, bounding 
after by twos. And now in lurid flash and steady roar 
the lightning and thunder darted and rolled from Mor- 
gan, its water-battery, and the Mobile squadron, and 
from the bow guns of the Brooklyn and Hartford. 

How marvelously fire, din and smoke shriveled up the 
time, which the captain’s small clock so mincingly 
ticked off. A cabin-boy brought a fragrant tray of 
breakfast, but the grateful ladies could only laugh at it. 
There was no moment to observe even the few pretty 
sail-boats which the fearful import and majesty of the 
strife lured down about them on the light side-wind. 

“Has the Tennessee not fired yet?” anxiously asked 
Anna, but no one was sure. Across the breeze, that 
kept the near side of the picture uncurtained, she per- 
fectly saw the Tecumseh close abreast of the flashing, 
smoke-shrouded fort, the Brooklyn to windward abreast 
of both, and the Hartford at the Brooklyn's heels with 
her signal fluttering to all behind, “ Close order.” 
“Why don’t the ships — ?” Anna had it on her lips 

379 


Kincaid’s Battery 

to cry, when the whole sunward side of the Brooklyn , 
and then of the Hartford, vomited fire, iron and blind- 
ing, strangling smoke into the water-battery and the fort, 
where the light air held it. God’s mercy! you could see 
the cheering of the fleet’s crews, which the ear could 
barely gather out of the far uproar, and just as it floated 
to the gazers they beheld the Tecumseh turn square to- 
ward them and head straight across the double line of 
torpedoes for the Tennessee. 

We never catch all of “ whatever happens,” and 
neither Callender saw the brave men in gray who for 
one moment of horror fled from their own guns in water- 
battery and fort; but all at once they beheld the Tecum- 
seh heave, stagger, and lurch like a drunkard, men 
spring from her turret into the sea, the Brooklyn falter, 
slacken fire and draw back, the Hartford and the whole 
huddled fleet come to a stand, and the rallied fort cheer 
and belch havoc into the ships while the Tecumseh sunk 
her head, lifted her screw into air and vanished beneath 
the wave. They saw Mobile Point a semicircle of dart- 
ing fire, and the Brooklyn “athwart the Hartford's 
hawse”; but they did not see, atom-small, perched high 
in the rigging of the flag-ship and demanding from the 
decks below, “why this?” and “why that?” a certain 
“plain sailor” well known to New Orleans and the wide 
world ; did not see the torpedoes lying in watery ambush 
for him, nor hear the dread tale of them called to him 
from the Brooklyn while his ship passed astern of her, 
nor him command “full speed ahead” as he retorted, 
“Damn the torpedoes!” 

They saw his ship and her small consort sweep un- 
destroyed over the dead-line, the Brooklyn follow with 
380 


Southern Cross and Northern Star 

hers, the Mobile gunboats rake the four with a fire they 
could not return, and behind them Fort Morgan and the 
other ships rend and shatter each other, shroud the air 
with smoke and thresh the waters white with shot and 
shell, shrapnel, canister and grape. And then they saw 
their own Tennessee ignore the monitors and charge the 
Hartford. But they beheld, too, the Hartford's better 
speed avoid the fearful blow and press on up the channel 
and the bay, though torn and bleeding from her foe’s 
broadside, while her own futilely glanced or rebounded 
from his impenetrable mail. 

Wisely, rightly their boat turned and slowly drew 
away toward Fort Powell and Cedar Point. Yet as from 
her after deck they saw the same exploit, at the same 
murderous cost, repeated by the Brooklyn and another 
and another great ship and their consorts, while not a 
torpedo did its work, they tearfully called the hour 
“glorious” and “victorious” for the Tennessee and her 
weak squadron, that still fought on. So it seemed to 
them even when more dimly, as distance and confusion 
grew and rain-clouds gathered, they saw a wooden ship 
ram the Tennessee, but glance off, and the slow Tennes- 
see drop astern, allow a sixth tall ship and small consort 
to pass, but turn in the wake of the seventh and all but 
disembowel her with the fire of her great bow gun. 

Ah, Anna! Even so, the shattered, steam-scalded 
thing came on and the last of the fleet was in. Yonder, 
a mere league eastward, it moved up the bay. Yet 
proudly hope throbbed on while still Mobile, behind 
other defenses, lay thirty miles away, while her gun- 
boats still raked the ships, while on Powell, Gaines and 
Morgan still floated the Southern cross, and while, 
38i 


Kincaid’s Battery 

down in the pass, still unharmed, paused only for 
breath the Tennessee . 

“Prisoners! they are all our prisoners !” tearfully 
exulted the fond Callenders. But on the word they 
saw the scene dissolve into a new one. Through a 
squall of wind and rain, out from the line of ships, four 
of their consorts glided away eastward, flashing and 
howling, in chase of the overmatched gunboats, that 
flashed and howled in retort as they fled. On the west 
a Federal flotilla in Mississippi Sound, steaming up 
athwart Grant’s Pass, opened on Fort Powell and 
awoke its thunders. Ah, ah! Kincaid’s Battery at 
last! Red, white and red they sent buffet for buffet, 
and Anna’s heart was longing anew for their tall hero 
and hers, when a voice hard by said, “ She’s coming 
back, sir, the Tennessee .” 

Out in the bay the fleet, about to anchor, turned and 
awaited the new onset. By the time it was at hand the 
Mobile gunboats, one burning, one fled, one captured, 
counted for nothing, yet on crept the Tennessee , still 
singling out the Hartford, and here the two Callenders, 
their boat hovering as near Powell and Gaines as it 
dared, looked on the titanic mel6e that fell round her. 
Like hounds and hunters on a bear robbed of her 
whelps, seventeen to one, they set upon her so thickly 
that their trouble was not to destroy one another. 
Near the beginning one cut her own flag-ship almost to 
the water-line. The first that smote the quarry — at ten 
knots speed — glanced and her broadside rolled harmless 
into the bay, while two guns of her monster adversary let 
daylight through and through the wooden ship. From 
the turret of a close-creeping monitor came the four- 
382 


Southern Cross and Northern Star 

hundred-and-forty-pound bolt of her fifteen-inch gun, 
crushing the lone foe terribly yet not quite piercing 
through. Another wooden ship charged, hit squarely 
a tearing blow, yet slid off, lay for a moment touching 
sides with the ironclad, while they lacerated each other 
like lion and tiger, and then dropped away. The 
hunted Hartford gave a staggering thrust and futile 
broadside. 

So for an hour went the fight; ships charging, the 
T ennessee crawling ever after her one picked antagonist, 
the monitors’ awful guns forever pounding her iron 
back and sides. But at length her mail began to yield, 
her best guns went silent, her smokestack was down, 
her steering-chains were gone, Buchanan lay heavily 
wounded. Of Farragut’s twenty-seven hundred men 
more than a seventh had fallen, victims mainly of the 
bear and her cubs, yet there she weltered, helpless. 
From her grim disjointed casemate her valorous captain 
let down the Southern cross, the white flag rose, and 
instantly, everywhere, God’s thunder and man’s 
alike ceased, and the merciful heavens smiled white 
and blue again. But their smile was on the flag of the 
Union, and mutely standing in each other’s embrace, 
with hearts as nearly right as they could know, Anna and 
Miranda gazed on the victorious stars-and-stripes and 
wept. 

What caused Anna to start and glance behind she 
did not know; but doing so she stared an instant breath- 
less and then, as she clutched Miranda for support, 
moaned to the tall, wasted, sadly smiling, crutched 
figure that moved closer — 

“Oh, Hilary! Are you Hilary Kincaid?” 

3 8 3 


Kincaid’s Battery 


LXX 

GAINS AND LOSSES 


They kissed. 

It looks strange written and printed, but she did not 
see how to hold off when he made it so tenderly manful a 
matter of course after his frank hand-shake with Mi- 
randa, and when there seemed so little time for words. 

An ambulance drawn by the Callenders’ horses had 
brought him and two or three others down the West 
Side. A sail-boat had conveyed them from the nearest 
beach. Here it was, now, in tow beside the steamboat 
as she gathered headway toward Fort Powell. He was 
not so weak or broken but he could point rapidly about 
with his crutches, the old light of command in his eyes, 
while with recognized authority he spoke to the boat’s 
master and these companions. 

He said things freely. There was not much down 
here to be secret about. Mobile had not fallen. She 
would yet be fought for on land, furiously. But the 
day was lost; as, incidentally, might be, at any moment, 
if not shrewdly handled, this lonesome little boat. 

Her captain moved to the pilot-house. Miranda and 
the junior officers left Hilary with Anna. “Did you 
say ‘the day,’” she softly asked, “or ‘the bay’?” 

“ Both,” he murmured, and with his two crutches in 
one hand directed her eyes: to the fleet anchored mid- 
way off Morgan, Gaines, and Powell; to the half-dozen 
gunboats on Mississippi Sound; to others still out in 
the Gulf, behind Morgan, off Mobile Point; to the blue 
land force entrenched behind Gaines, and to the dunes 

384 


Gains and Losses 

east of Morgan, where similar besiegers would un- 
doubtedly soon be landed. 

“Yes . . . Yes,” she said to his few explanations. 

It was all so sadly clear. 

“A grand fort yet,” he musingly called Morgan, 
“but it ought to be left and blown to fare-you-well to- 
night, before it’s surroun I wish my cousin were 

there instead of in Gaines. ’Dolphe fights well, but he 
knows when not to fight and that we’ve come, now, to 
where every man we’ve got, and every gun, counts big- 
ger than to knock out any two of the enemy’s. You 
know Fred’s over yonder, don’t you ? and that Kincaid’s 
Battery, without their field-pieces, are just here in 
Powell behind her heavy guns? . . . Yes, Victorine 
said you did; I saw her this morning, with Constance.” 
He paused, and then spoke lower: 

“Beloved?” 

She smiled up to him. 

“Our love’s not through all the fire, yet,” he said, 
but her smile only showed more glow. 

“My soul’s-mate, war-mate soldier-girl,” he mur- 
mured on. 

“Well?” 

“If you stand true in what’s before us now, before 
just you and me, now and for weeks to come, I want 
your word for it right here that your standing true shall 
not be for the sake of any vow you’ve ever made to me, 
or for me, or with me, in the past, the blessed, blessed 
past. You promise?” 

“I promise,” she breathed. “ What is it?” 

“A thing that takes more courage than I’ve got.” 

“Then how will you do it?” she lightly asked. 

385 


Kincaid’s Battery 

“By borrowing all yours. May I?” 

“Yoil may. Is it to save — our battery?” 

“Our battery, yes, against their will, with others, if 
I can persuade the fort’s commander. At low tide to- 
night, when the shoals can be forded to Cedar Point, I 
shall be” — his words grew hurried — the steamer was 
touching the fort’s pier — the sail-boat, which was to 
take Anna and Miranda to where the ambulance and 
their own horses awaited them had cast off her painter — 
“I shall be the last man out of Powell and shall blow it 
up. Come, it may be we sha’n’t meet again until 
I’ve” — he smiled — “been court-martialed and de- 
graded. If I am, we ” 

“If you are,” she murmured, “you may take me to 
the nearest church — or the biggest — that day.” 

“No, no!” he called as she moved away, and again, 
with a darkening brow, “no, no!” 

“But, “Yes, yes,” she brightly insisted as she re- 
joined Miranda. “Yes!” 

For the horses’ sake the ladies went that afternoon 
only to “ Frascati,” lower limit of the Shell Road, where, 
in a small hour of the night Anna heard the sudden boom 
and long rumble that told the end of Fort Powell and 
salvation of its garrison. 

That Gaines held out a few days, Morgan a few 
weeks, are heroic facts of history, which, with a much 
too academic shrug, it calls “magnifique, mais — !” 
Their splendid armament and all their priceless men 
fell into their besiegers’ hands. Irby, haughtily declining 
the strictly formal courtesies of Fred Greenleaf, went to 
prison in New Orleans. What a New Orleans! The 
mailed clutch on her throat (to speak as she felt) had 
386 


Gains and Losses 

grown less ferocious, but everywhere the Unionist 
civilian — the once browbeaten and still loathed “ North- 
ern sympathizer,” with grudges to pay and losses to 
recoup and re-recoup — was in petty authority. Con- 
fiscation was swallowing up not industrial and commer- 
cial properties merely, but private homes; espionage 
peeped round every street corner and into every back 
window, and “A. Ward’s” ante-bellum jest, that “a 
white man was as good as a nigger as long as he behaved 
himself,” was a jest no more. Miss Flora Valcour, that 
ever faithful and daring Southerner, was believed by all 
the city’s socially best to be living — barely living — under 
“the infamous Greenleaf’s” year-long threat of Ship 
Island for having helped Anna Callender to escape to 
Mobile. Hence her haunted look and pathetic loss of 
bloom. Now, however, with him away and with Gen- 
eral Canby ruling in place of Banks, she and her dear 
fragile old grandmother could breathe a little. 

They breathed much. We need not repeat that the 
younger was a gifted borrower. She did other things 
equally well; resumed a sagacious activity, a two-sided 
tact, and got Irby paroled. On the anniversary of the 
day Hilary had played brick-mason a city paper (Union- 
ist) joyfully proclaimed the long-delayed confiscation of 
Kincaid’s Foundry and of Callender House, and an- 
nounced that “the infamous Kincaid” himself had been 
stripped of his commission by a “rebel” court-martial. 
Irby promptly brought the sheet to the Valcours’ lodg- 
ings, but Flora was out. When she came in, before she 
could lay off her pretty hat: 

“You’ve heard it!” cried the excited grandam. 
“ But why so dead-alive ? Once more the luck is yours ! 

3 8 7 


Kincaid’s Battery 

Play your knave! play Irby! He’s just been here! He 
will return ! He will propose this evening if you allow 
him! Let him do it! Let him! Mobile may fall any 
day! If you dilly-dally till those accursed Callenders 
get back, asking, for instance, for their — ha, ha! — their 
totally evaporated chest of plate — gr-r-r! Take him! 
He has just shown me his uncle’s will — as he calls it: 
a staring forgery, but you, h-you won’t mind that , and 
the ‘ladies’ man’ — ah, the ‘ladies’ man,’ once you are 
his cousin, he’ll never let on. Take Irby! he is, as you 
say, a nincompoop” — she had dropped into English — 
“and seldom sober, mais take him! ’t is the las’ call of 
the auctioneer, yo’ fav-oreet auctioneer — with the 
pointed ears and the forked black tail.” 

Flora replied from a mirror with her back turned: 
“I’ll thing ab-out it. And maybee — yes! Ezpecially 
if you would do uz that one favor, lazd thing when you 
are going to bed the night we are married. Yez, if you 
would — ahem! — juz’ blow yo’ gas without turning it?” 

That evening, when the accepted Irby, more nearly 
happy than ever before in his life, said good-night 
to his love they did not kiss. At the first stir of proffer 
Flora drew back with a shudder that reddened his brow. 
But when he demanded, “ Why not ? ” her radiant shake 
of the head was purely bewitching as she replied, “No, 
I have n’ fall’ that low yet.” 

When after a day or so he pressed for immediate 
marriage and was coyly referred to Madame, the old lady 
affectionately — though reluctantly — consented. With 

a condition: If the North should win the war his in- 
heritance would be “confiz-cate”’ and there would be 
nothing to begin life on but the poor child’s burned- 
388 


Gains and Losses 

down home behind Mobile, unless, for mutual protec- 
tion, nothing else, — except “one dollar and other 
valuable considerations,” — he should preconvey the 
Brodnax estate to the poor child, who, at least, had 
never been “foun’ out” to have done anything to 
subject property of hers to confiscation. 

This transfer Irby, with silent reservations, quietly 
executed, and the day, hour and place, the cathedral, 
were named A keen social flutter ensued and presently 
the wedding came off — stop! That is not all. In- 
stantly upon the close of the ceremony the bride had to 
be more lifted than led to her carriage and so to her 
room and couch, whence she sent loving messages to the 
bridegroom that she would surely be well enough to see 
him next day. But he had no such fortune, and here 
claims record a fact even more wonderful than Anna’s 
presentiment as to Hilary that morning in Mobile Bay. 
The day after his wedding Irby found his parole revoked 
and himself, with others, back in prison and invited to 
take the oath and go free — stand up in the war-worn 
gray and forswear it — or stay where they were to the 
war’s end. Every man of them took it — when the war 
was over; but until then ? not one. Not even the bride- 
groom robbed of his bride. Every week or so she came 
and saw him, among his fellows, and bade him hold out! 
stand fast! It roused their great admiration, but not 
their wonder. The wonder was in a fact of which they 
knew nothing: That the night before her marriage 
Flora had specifically, minutely prophesied this whole 
matter to her grandmother, whose only response was 
that same marveling note of nearly four years earlier — 

“You are a genius!” 


389 


Kincaid’s Battery 


LXXI 

SOLDIERS OF PEACE 

In March, ’Sixty-five, the Confederacy lay dying. 
While yet in Virginia and the Carolinas, at Mobile and 
elsewhere her armies daily, nightly strove on, bled on, 
a stricken quiet and great languor had come over her, 
a quiet with which the quiet ending of this tale is only 
in reverent keeping. 

On Mobile’s eastern side Spanish Fort and Fort 
Blakely, her last defenses, were fighting forty thousand 
besiegers. Kincaid’s Battery was there, and there was 
heavy artillery, of course, but this time the “ladies’ men’ 
— still so called — had field-guns, though but three. 
They could barely man that number. One was a unit 
of the original six lost “for them, not by them,” at 
Vicksburg, and lately recovered. 

Would there were time for its story! The boys had 
been sent up the state to reinforce Forrest. Having 
one evening silenced an opposing battery, and stealing 
over in the night and bringing off its best gun, they had 
slept about “her” till dawn, but then had laughed, 
hurrahed, danced, and wept round her and fallen upon 
her black neck and kissed her big lips on finding her no 
other than their own old “Roaring Betsy.” She might 
have had a gentler welcome had not her lads just learned 
that while they slept the “ladies’ man” had arrived from 
Mobile with a bit of news glorious alike for him and 
them. 

The same word reached New Orleans about the same 
date. Flora, returning from a call on Irby, brought 

39 ° 


Soldiers of Peace 


it to her grandmother. In the middle of their sitting- 
room, with the worst done-for look yet, standing 
behind a frail chair whose back she gripped with both 
hands, she meditatively said 

“All privieuse statement’ ab-out that court-martial 
on the ’vacuation of Ford Powell are prim-ature. It 
has, with highez’ approval, acquit ’ every one concern’ 
in it.” She raised the light chair to the limit of her 
reach and brought it down on another with a force that 
shivered both. Madame rushed for a door, but — 
“ Stay ! ” amiably said the maiden. “ Pick up the pieces 
— for me — eh? I’ll have to pick up the pieces of you 
some day — soon — I hope — mm?” 

She took a book to a window seat, adding as she went, 
“Victorine. You’ve not heard ab-out that, neither? 
She’s biccome an orphan. Hmm! Also — the little 
beggar! — she’s — married. Yes. To Charles Valcour. 
My God! I wish I was a man. 



“ Um, hmm, hmm, hmm, Mm, hmm. hmm, hmm — 

“ Leave the room /” 

But these were closed incidents when those befell 
which two or three final pages linger to recount. The 
siege of Spanish Fort was the war’s last great battle. 
From March twenty-sixth to April the eighth it was 
deadly, implacable; the defense hot, defiant, auda- 
cious. On the night of the eighth the fort’s few hun- 
dred cannoneers spiked their heavy guns and, taking 
their light ones along, left it. They had fought fully 


39i 


Kincaid’s Battery 

aware that Richmond was already lost, and on the 
next day, a Sabbath, as Kincaid’s Battery trundled 
through the town while forty thousand women and 
children — with the Callenders and little Steve — wept, 
its boys knew their own going meant Mobile had 
fallen, though they knew not that in that very hour 
the obscure name of Appomattox was being made for- 
ever great in history. 

“I reached Meridian,” writes their general, “refitted 
the . . . field batteries and made ready to march 
across (country) and join General Joseph E. Johnston 
in Carolina. The tidings of Lee’s surrender soon came. 
. . . But ... the little army of Mobile remained 
steadfastly together, and in perfect order and discipline 
awaited the final issue of events.” 

It was while they so waited that Kincaid’s Battery 
learned of the destruction, by fire, of Callender House, 
but took comfort in agreeing that now, at last, come or 
fail what might, the three sweetest women that ever 
lived would live up-town. 

One lovely May morning a Federal despatch-boat — 
yes, the one we know — sped down Mobile Bay with 
many gray-uniformed men aboard, mostly of the ranks 
and unaccoutred, but some of them officers still belted 
for their unsurrendered swords. Many lads showed the 
red artillery trim and wore jauntily on their battered 
caps K. B. separated by crossed cannon. “Roaring 
Betsy” had howled her last forever. Her sergeant, 
Valcour, was there, with his small fond bride, both 
equally unruffled by any misgiving that they would not 
pull through this still inviting world happily. 

Mandeville was present, his gilt braid a trifle more 
392 


Soldiers of Peace 

gilt than any one else’s. Constance and little Steve— 
who later became president of the Cotton Exchange — 
were with him. Also Miranda. Out forward yonder on 
the upper deck, beside tall Hilary Kincaid, stood Anna. 
Greenleaf eyed them from the pilot-house, where he 
had retired to withhold the awkward reminder insep- 
arable from his blue livery. In Hilary’s fingers was 
a writing which he and Anna had just read together. 
In reference to it he was saying that while the South 
had fallen to the bottom depths of poverty the North 
had been growing rich, and that New Orleans, for in- 
stance, was chock full of Yankees — oh, yes, I’m afraid 
that’s what he called them — Yankees, with greenbacks 
in every pocket, eager to set up any gray soldier who 
knew how to make, be or do anything mutually profit- 
able. Moved by Fred Greenleaf, who could furnish 
funds but preferred, himself, never to be anything but 
a soldier, the enterprising husband of the once de- 
ported but now ever so happily married schoolmistress 
who 

“Yes, I know,” said Anna 

Well, for a trifle, at its confiscation sale, this man 
had bought Kincaid’s Foundry, which now stood 
waiting for Hilary to manage, control and in the end 
recover to his exclusive ownership on the way to larger 
things. What gave the subject an intense tenderness of 
unsordid interest was that it meant for the pair — what 
so many thousands of paroled heroes and the women 
they loved and who loved them were hourly finding out 
— that they were not such beggars, after all, but they 
might even there and then name their wedding day, 
which then and there they named. 

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Kincaid’s Battery 

“Let Adolphe and Flora keep the old estate and be 
as happy on it, and in it, as Heaven will let them; 
they’ve got each other to be happy with. The world 
still wants cotton, and if they’ll stand for the old 
South’s cotton we’ll stand for a new South and iron; 
iron and a new South, Nan, my Nannie; a new and 
better South and even a new and better New Orl — see 
where we are! Right yonder the Tennessee ” 

“Yes,” interrupted Anna, “let’s put that behind us 
— henceforth, as the boat is doing now.” 

The steamer turned westward into Grant’s Pass. 
To southward lay Morgan and Gaines, floating the 
ensign of a saved Union. Close here on the right lay 
the ruins of Fort Powell. From the lower deck the 
boys, pressing to the starboard guards to see, singly or 
in pairs smiled up to Hilary’s smile. Among them was 
Sam Gibbs, secretly bearing home the battery’s colors 
wrapped round him next his scarred and cross-scarred 
body. And so, farewell Mobile. Hour by hour through 
the beautiful blue day, island after island, darkling green 
or glistering white, rose into view, drifted by between the 
steamer and the blue Gulf and sunk into the deep; Petit 
Bois, Horn Island, Ship Island, Cat Island. Now past 
Round Island, up Lake Borgne and through the Rigo- 
lets they swept into Pontchartrain, and near the day’s 
close saw the tide-low, sombre but blessed shore be- 
yond which a scant half-hour’s railway ride lay the city 
they called home. 

Across the waters westward, where the lake’s mar- 
gin, black-rimmed with cypresses, lapsed into a watery 
horizon, and the sun was going down in melancholy 
splendor, ran unseen that northbound railway by which 

394 


Soldiers of Peace 

four years earlier they had set off for the war with ranks 
full and stately, with music in the air and with thou- 
sands waving them on. Now not a note, not a drum- 
tap, not a boast nor a jest illumined their return. In 
the last quarter-hour aboard, when every one was on 
the lower deck about the forward gangway, Hilary and 
Anna, having chanced to step up upon a coil of rope, 
found it easier, in the unconscious press, to stay there 
than to move on, and in keeping with his long habit as 
a leader he fell into a lively talk with those nearest him, 
— Sam and Charlie close in front, Bartleson and Mande- 
ville just at his back, — to lighten the general heaviness. 
At every word his listeners multiplied, and presently, 
in a quiet but insistent tone, came calls for a “ speech ” 
and the “ladies’ man.” 

“No,” he gaily replied, “oh, no, boys!” But his 
words went on and became something much like what 
they craved. As he ceased came the silent, ungreeted 
landing. Promptly followed the dingy train’s short 
run up the shore of the New Canal, and then its stop 
athwart St. Charles Street, under no roof, amid no 
throng, without one huzza or cry of welcome, and the 
prompt dispersal of the outwardly burdenless wander- 
ers, in small knots afoot, up-town, down-town, many of 
them trying to say over again those last words from the 
chief hero of their four years’ trial by fire. The effort 
was but effort, no full text has come down; but their 
drift seems to have been that, though disarmed, unliv- 
eried, and disbanded, they could remain true soldiers: 
That the perfect soldier loves peace, loathes war : That 
no man can be such who cannot, whether alone or 
among thousands of his fellows, strive, suffer and wait 

395 


Kincaid’s Battery 

with magnanimous patience, stake life and fortune, and, 
in extremity, fight like a whirlwind, for the victories of 
peace: That every setting sun will rise again if it is a 
true sun: That good-night was not good-by : and that, 
as for their old nickname, no one can ever be a whole 
true ladies’ man whose aim is not at some title far above 
and beyond it — which last he said not of himself, but in 
behalf and by request of the mother of the guns they 
had gone out with and of the furled but unsullied 
banner they had brought home. 

THE END. 


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